


Wish Responsibly

by FootlessData507



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Be Careful What You Wish For, Case Fic, F/M, Humor, Light-Hearted, MSR, Sometime in season 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2018-12-24 16:26:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12016590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FootlessData507/pseuds/FootlessData507
Summary: It's time for the FBI's Communication and Teamwork Seminar! A crazy weekend of small group discussions, blind origami, and trust falls! Unfortunately for Scully, the excitement doesn't stop there.





	1. Two Agents Buy Some Candles

**Author's Note:**

> Every time I think of Detour, I wish we'd followed Mulder and Scully to the seminar instead, so I wrote this story where they actually go to a seminar. It takes place sometime during season 6, and contains minor spoilers. I had a lot of fun writing it, and hope you have a lot of fun reading it. It's a multi-chapter fic. The other chapters are currently being edited, and should be posted fairly soon.

Somewhere on the road between Kansas City International Airport and the Sheraton Convention Center, Agent Subhi Taleb expressed an unpopular opinion. “This is going to be so much fun!” she exclaimed. She hugged a binder labeled “Communication and Teamwork Seminar Master Plan” to her chest. The binder was five inches thick and filled to capacity. If one were to open Subhi’s binder, one would find its pages thoroughly annotated in her loopy handwriting.  
  
The driver of the car, Agent Victoria Romero, also had a “Communication and Teamwork Seminar Master Plan” binder. Hers lay on the back seat, and was only one inch thick. If one were to open Victoria’s binder, one would find its pages empty of any annotations.  
  
“When’s our turn off?” Victoria asked.  
  
Subhi opened up an accordion road map, glanced at the nearest road sign, and did some quick calculations. “Thirty more miles,” she answered. She refolded the road map with limited success and stuffed it in the glove compartment. “How many of these have you organized, again?” she asked her companion.  
  
“Dunno…” Victoria shrugged. She sounded distracted, perhaps because she was in the process of passing a Walmart truck. Or she was distracted because it had been ten hours since her last cigarette. She’d tried to smoke one before getting their rental car, but Subhi had balked, arguing that it was unfair for her to have to share a car with someone reeking of smoke. “A dozen or so conventions, I s’pose…”  
  
“Wow! You must really know your stuff with all that experience!” Subhi exclaimed.  
  
“I guess…” Victoria murmured. “They all sort of run together…” She stuffed one hand into her jacket pocket and longingly stroked the package of Morleys sitting there. Just thirty more miles. Just thirty more miles.  
  
“Not this year, though!” Subhi proclaimed. “This year’s going to be amazing—I mean, I had _so_ much fun last year just _participating_ but now that I got to plan it, it’s going to be really fun—really fun!”  
  
“Yep…should be fun…” agreed Victoria absently. She turned on the radio and flipped through a few stations. Finding only country western, she turned the radio back off.  
  
“Just think—we’re going to have agents from all over the country!” Subhi pointed out. “New York, California, Hawaii, D.C.—we’re going to meet so many great people and think of the stories they’ll have to tell! Do you ever wish you were a field agent so you had exciting adventures to share?”  
  
“Not really…” Victoria shook her head. “I did the field agent thing for a couple years. I’m happier in HR.”  
  
Subhi beamed at Victoria. “That’s what I love about you, Vicky! You know exactly what you want!”  
  
“Adventures are overrated. What about you?” Victoria glanced at Subhi. “Do you think you might ever want to get out from behind the desk?”  
  
“I don’t know…” Subhi frowned, as if she had never considered this before. “I love where I am—I don’t think I’d be great in the field…”  
  
Privately, Victoria agreed. Subhi was a people person…but the “people” in “people person” probably didn’t extend to criminals or the types of people field agents often had to interact with. She’d hate for her bright-eyed colleague to see the worst that humanity had to offer. She liked Subhi, notwithstanding her annoying habit of giving accusatory sniffs every time Victoria returned from a smoke break.  
  
“But,” Subhi continued, “it would be nice to have exciting stories to share. But at least I’ll get to live vicariously this weekend…” She opened her binder and flipped to a page marked by an orange Post-it note. “Look at all these people attending…oh, I bet these agents from Violent Crimes have lots of exciting stories! And Transnational Criminal Enterprise—maybe they could tell us about that mafia bust in New Jersey! And—” She paused at the next entry on her list. “I’ve never heard of this department before. The X-Files?” She looked at Victoria. “What do they do?”  
  
Victoria barked a brief laugh. “The X-Files—they’re coming?” She shook her head. “First time for everything, I s’pose…”  
  
“What do they do?” Subhi repeated.  
  
“As far as I can tell, chase after aliens, sasquatches, creatures from the Black Lagoon—”  
  
“Haha, very funny,” Subhi folded her arms across her chest. “No, seriously—what do they do? Is it a secret?”  
  
Victoria shook her head. “I’m not pulling your leg. That’s what they do. They get the weird cases.”  
  
Subhi was studying the attendance list again. “It says they’re based in D.C.,” she said. D.C. was also where Victoria and Subhi were located. “Why haven’t we ever seen them before?”  
  
“I met them once before you came along,” Victoria told her. “The department is only two people. They’re in the basement.”  
  
“There’s an office in the basement?”  
  
“There’s a _room_ in the basement. I guess you’d call it their office. I think it was intended to be storage…” Victoria merged into the right lane.  
  
“What are they like?” Subhi asked.  
  
Victoria shrugged. “Hard to say. It was right after that Howard incident, when we had to have those meetings with each department to review the sexual harassment policy. So, you know, your average department is huge and you do a slideshow presentation to this big audience…”  
  
Subhi nodded. She’d done some of those presentations in the past.  
  
Victoria continued: “But since the X-Files was only two agents, we tried to fold them in with the Financial Crimes Section’s presentation, but then at the last minute the X-Files went running across the country because a bunch of zoo animals went missing—”  
  
“Zoo animals?”  
  
“Like I said—the weird cases. So anyway, they come back and we’ve finished all the other presentations, so I have to go down to the basement and go through the presentation for just these two agents.” She shivered. “So awkward.”  
  
Subhi nodded sympathetically. “Yeah, that does sound uncomfortable.”  
  
“Oh my God, that male agent—what’s-his-name—”  
  
“Fox Mulder,” Subhi provided, glancing at the roster.  
  
“Yeah—Mulder—so he has this grin on his face the whole time like he’s cracking up on the inside. The female agent—”  
  
“Dana Scully,” Subhi glanced at the roster again.  
  
“She’s at least is trying to keep a straight face. So, we get to the point in the slideshow with the roleplaying section and I tell them that hey, since it’s just the two of them, maybe we should skip it, but Agent Mulder says _no, no,_ we need to do the roleplaying section. He says the other departments have been raving about the roleplaying section and he wants to get the full presentation—so he’ll know how to appropriately respond to sexual harassment _when and if he encounters it in the workplace.”_  
  
“He didn’t!” Subhi gasped.  
  
“He did,” Victoria confirmed, grinning. “Agent Scully has her head in her hands—I’m not sure whether she was embarrassed or she found it funny. But because he’s requested it, we have to do the roleplaying section now. But there are only the two of them, so I can’t take volunteers, so I have to just hand them the scripts and Agent Mulder starts reading the _woman’s part!”_  
  
_“What?”_  
  
“I can’t say anything—it’s not against the rules, and he’s not, like, hamming it up. He’s just reading the lines normally. But then Agent Scully—and her face is red—she has to read the harasser’s lines and _oh my God, I wanted to die!_ So, finally we get onto the Q &A slide, and Mulder raises his hand and asks a few questions—”  
  
“What questions?”  
  
“Just questions!” Victoria yelps. “Like, normal questions! The kind of questions that would be routine in a presentation in front of a couple hundred people, but any questions about sexual harassment are so weird when only two people are there for the presentation. So, I give him the canned responses and I finally get to leave and close the door behind me. I have to stand in the hall for a minute to process what just happened but I can hear them cracking up through the door. First just Agent Mulder, and then they say something to each other, and Agent Scully starts laughing too—both of them! Laughing like hyenas! And then the elevator doors open and there’s Skinner, and he sees me red-faced clutching my slides and my sexual harassment seminar scripts, and he hears his two agents laughing like they’re gonna break a rib, and he just lets out this weary sigh, and says, ‘My apologies, Agent Romero.’ Then I went into elevator, he went into their office, and that was that.”  
  
For a while, the only sound in the car was Victoria and Subhi’s laughter. By the time it had subsided, their turn off was approaching. Victoria turned on her right turn signal and exited the highway. They were soon driving through the outskirts of Kansas City: small, dingy shops and empty lots.  
  
“Anyway,” Victoria said, hiccupping slightly from the laughter, “it just goes to show that you don’t need to be out in the field to have great stories. Even in HR, you might just get your wish and get a fun story to share—what’s wrong?”  
  
She was asking because Subhi had dropped her binder, and her eyes were open wide. _“Wish!”_ Subhi hissed. “Victoria—I forgot the candles!”  
  
“Oh, is that all?” Victoria rolled her eyes. “I thought it was something important! No one’s going to care if we skip one activity—”  
  
“ _I’ll_ care!” Subhi shrieked. “The wishing activity is the most important activity! It’s the last activity of the first night! My end-of-seminar speech won’t make any sense if we don’t do it! Do you know how many wishing-related puns I thought of?”  
  
Sadly, Victoria did, since she had been the test audience of said puns. “Okay—okay—calm down!” Victoria held up a hand. “We have plenty of time to get candles. Look!” She pointed to a store on their left labeled ‘Mystic Treasures.’ She parked the car in front of it. “Go in and see if they have any.”  
  
Subhi wrinkled her nose and glared at the store windows, which featured, among other things, a bong, a skull, and a bong shaped like a skull. “This place looks sort of…like a place a crazy person would shop at…”  
  
Victoria shrugged. “Hey, even crazy people buy candles.” In fact, Victoria was of the opinion that _only_ crazy people bought candles in great quantities, because a little invention known as the lightbulb had made those fire hazards obsolete a century ago. She didn’t voice that opinion, however, because Subhi had given her a Winter Spice scented Yankee Candle last year as a Christmas present. Instead, she impressed on Subhi the inconvenience of finding the nearest Walmart. “As long as we’re here, at least look inside.”  
  
Subhi took a deep breath of un-incensed air, got out of the car, and disappeared into the shop. Victoria took her absence as an opportunity to step out of the car, stretch her legs, and smoke a quick cigarette. About three minutes later, the door to Mystic Treasures opened, and Victoria hastily tossed her cigarette down a gutter.  
  
Subhi emerged heaving a large bag. “You were right, as always,” she admitted. “They had them right by the register—they even call them ‘wishing candles’! How funny is that?”  
  
“Phew,” Victoria replied in mock relief. She opened the car door for Subhi, and hurried over to her side and hopped in. “I thought for a minute all of those puns were going to be wasted.”  
  
“Nope!” Subhi shook her head happily. “Crisis averted!” She looked at the map once more, and then gave the air a suspicious sniff.


	2. Four Agents Check in at the Sheraton

“…but by that point, Tom—that old softie—he’d already promised Allyson she could get a puppy. So, I told Allyson that she could get one, but only if she promised to take care of it, and then we went to the pound and got Daisy—and she is such a cutie pie!” Agent Gibbons took a photo from her wallet and held it up so the occupants of the back seat could see a blond, blue-eyed girl clutching a black lab puppy. “Oh, and I have another one!” She took out another photo, this one showing the whole nuclear family petting the dog, who was delightedly rolling on the perfectly manicured lawn. “Do either of you have pets?”  
  
“I had a dog but…he’s dead now,” answered the red-haired woman sitting behind the passenger seat.  
  
“Oh—I’m so sorry to hear that!” Agent Gibbons—no, please, call her Susan—turned around in her seat as best she could and patted the grieving dog-owner’s knee. “How did the little guy go?”  
  
“It’s not a very pleasant story…”  
  
“Dana, please,” Susan Gibbons squeezed the woman’s hand, “you can tell me anything.”  
  
“Now Suzy,” the driver murmured, “if Agent Scully would rather not talk about it—”  
  
“Oh, be quiet, Fred!” Susan shushed her partner. “It’s not healthy to keep—”  
  
“Scully’s dog was eaten by an alligator,” the other occupant of the backseat announced.  
  
“Yes, thanks Mulder,” Dana Scully sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Thanks for clearing that up.”  
  
“Anytime.” Mulder returned his gaze to the farmland whizzing past them.  
  
Susan’s gaze, on the other hand, was swiveling between the two agents in the backseat. Then she looked at her partner, asking a silent question: ‘Is he serious?’  
  
Agent Fred Partridge glanced at her, shrugged, and returned his eyes to the road. It wasn’t a particularly long drive from Kansas City International Airport to the Sheraton Convention Center, but it had seemed long. His partner Suzy had been making noble stabs at conversation ever since the beginning of the ride when she had swiveled around and asked Agent Scully if she had “anyone special in her life,” but Scully met every question with a hesitant, vague answer. Spooky Mulder, when he answered at all, gave answers so strange that every time, Suzy had turned to her partner and silently asked him if Spooky was being serious.  
  
Silence hung in the car. Fred turned on the radio, flipped through a few stations, and settled on a classic country station.  
  
“So,” Susan smiled determinedly at the man in the back who was now silently mouthing the words to _Love Me Tender_ along with the King, “Fox, do you have pets?”  
  
“Mulder,” he corrected her.  
  
“He has fish,” Scully answered for him.  
  
“Oh—fish! How nice! They’re…” Susan searched for something complimentary to say about fish, which was difficult because in her opinion, any pets you couldn’t cuddle were a waste of time. “Low-maintenance,” she finally settled on.  
  
She nudged Fred, who got the hint and contributed to the conversation. “That must be nice, since I hear you spend a lot of time on the road.”  
  
“Yep, we’re a couple of vagabonds…” Mulder murmured. He leaned over and whispered something to his partner, who elbowed him. Then Scully asked Fred and Susan if they were on the road a lot.  
  
They both shook their heads. “I used to be,” Fred answered. “Back when I was a field agent in San Francisco—my partner was Pete Cai. We did drug busts…” he grinned fondly at the memories. “You know, we once did a six-hour shoot out with this kingpin. Thought I was going to run out of ammo, but we got him! Exciting times—some of the best years of my life. But then my son Jack came along and I knew it was time to settle down, so I took a desk job and Judy and I moved to D.C. Can’t exactly raise a family when you’re racing all over the country, putting your life on the line.”  
  
“No,” Scully sighed, “you can’t.”  
  
Mulder cleared his throat. “You seen Pete Cai recently?”  
  
Fred shook his head. “No, but he’ll be at the convention. Can’t wait to see him and relive old times…”  
  
“Speaking of exciting cases,” Susan said, swiveling back around to face the agents behind her, “you two must have some great stories to share! Any interesting recent cases?”  
  
“I’m sure there have been…” Scully said, frowning. “Give me a minute…”  
  
“We came across a town of vampires a few months ago,” Mulder answered with a flat voice. The corners of his lips twitched.  
  
Susan shot Fred another ‘Is he serious?’ look, and Fred turned up the volume. For a couple minutes, Hank Williams’s _Honky Tonkin’_ was the only sound in the car.  
  
Then Scully cleared her throat. “There are other cases, too. Some of them are more…conventional.”  
  
“ _Some_ of them,” Mulder admitted. “But some of them—”  
  
“So, Susan!” Scully exclaimed, cutting off her partner, “tell me about your husband! You said his name was Tom?”  
  
Susan was happy to discuss Tom. She discussed his job (hedge fund manager), his hobbies (playing poker and watching boxing), and their courtship (set up by Susan’s sister).  
  
“Do you have any sisters, Dana?” asked Susan.  
  
“I had a sister,” Scully admitted after a pause. “But she’s…passed on now.”  
  
This time, Susan had enough sense not to inquire as to the cause, and she moved onto the other agent. “What about you, Fox?” she asked. “Do you have any sisters?” She either didn’t notice or just ignored the warning Fred was mouthing to her.  
  
“I have a sister,” Mulder readily answered. “She was abducted as part of a vast government conspiracy.”  
  
“Oh…” Susan bit her lip. “That’s…interesting.” She flailed for another topic. “Are you—are you seeing anyone, Fox?”  
  
“No, but you’re not the first person to suggest therapy,” Mulder responded.  
  
“—Oh, I didn’t mean—”  
  
“I know what you meant,” Mulder leaned forward, his eyes twinkling. “It’s just me and my low-maintenance fish.” He clapped his partner’s shoulder. “And the doc here, of course.”  
  
Susan’s eyes flashed between the grinning Mulder and the grimacing Scully. She had an unsettling feeling she was being mocked, but she couldn’t put her finger on how.  
  
“Well, looks like we’re here!” Fred exclaimed, pulling into the Sheraton Convention Center parking lot. “Let’s go check in!” Susan and Fred exited the car and unloaded the luggage. Mulder and Scully followed them from a good ten feet away.  
  
Scully leaned into Mulder. “You had too much fun there.” She looked disapproving.  
  
He winked at her. “You gotta take your fun while you can. After all, we’re about to enter the FBI Communication and Teamwork Seminar…” He dawdled outside of the hotel’s automatic doors and pointed to the transom. “Abandon all fun, ye who enter here.”  
  
Scully rolled her eyes and tugged her partner through the doors. “This weekend doesn’t have to be torture. You could _try_ to be less closeminded…”  
  
Mulder gaped at her, and allowed himself to be pulled forward. “Closeminded?” he gasped, pointing to himself. “ _Me?_ ”  
  
When Scully and Mulder entered hotels in middle America, they were used to being the smartest dressed people there. But at the Sheraton Convention Center, they didn’t stick out. Suit-wearing men and pantsuit-wearing women milled about the lobby. One agent was pacing by the water cooler talking on his cell phone, using expressions like, “evidence trail,” “wiretap,” and “eighteen tons of pure, uncut cocaine.”  
  
The only other occupants of the lobby were a mother and two children sitting on the couch. They were dressed identically: khaki pants and an orange T-shirt labeled “Bragg Family Reunion.” They also wore identical expressions: wonder and confusion at the scene they had stumbled into.  
  
“Men in Black, mom!” the girl exclaimed, pointing at two agents wearing their sunglasses inside. “Men in Black!”  
  
Mulder and Scully joined Susan and Fred at the check-in desk. Fred had just rung the bell for the attendant, who hurried from the back office.  
  
“Welcome!” she gasped. “You must be here for the FBI convention.”  
  
Fred nodded and provided their names, which the woman rapidly entered into her computer.  
  
“Okay…” she said, “I’ve got your room keys right here…” Scully and Susan were in room 321. Mulder and Fred, she placed in room 323. Next, she handed them each a folder. “This includes your itinerary for the weekend and a map of the hotel. Your convention takes up most of the hotel, but you should know…” she circled one room on a map she’d extracted from Fred’s folder, “Activity Room G is reserved for the Bragg Family Reunion.”  
  
Mulder glanced at the family on the couch. The son had been creeping towards an agent who was leafing through the latest issue of _People_ , and the mother grabbed her son’s hand and pulled him back to her. The daughter was using this moment of distraction as an opportunity to pull the disposable camera from her mom’s purse.  
  
Fred, Susan, and Scully were now stepping into one of the elevators, and Mulder joined them. The girl raised the camera, and just as she snapped a picture of them, Mulder made a silly, bloated face. The elevator doors slammed shut, muting the girl’s laughter.


	3. Eight Agents Do Origami

            Subhi uncapped and recapped her Sharpie a few times, and fidgeted in her collapsible chair. She was sitting outside of Presentation Room A at a table covered with nametags and lanyards. A woman swung the door open, and voices and laughter filtered in.

            “Pardon me—Special Agent David Demopoulos, FBI!” a new arrival announced to her, flashing his badge. Both the badge flash and his announcement that he was with the FBI were unnecessary seeing as they were at a convention for _FBI agents_ , but Subhi gave David the benefit of the doubt. It must have been force of habit, she supposed.

            “Nice to meet you, David!” Subhi greeted him, pumping his hand. “My name’s Subhi! I’m one of the people running this event, so if you have any questions—”

            “Is there a prize this year?” David demanded.

            Subhi stared at him. “A prize?” Not many people had actually taken her up on her offer to ask questions. What few questions she had received had involved room reassignments or the hours of the exercise room.

            “I heard last year there were prizes,” David explained. He lowered his sunglasses, which he was still wearing for some reason even though they were indoors. “Are there prizes this year?”

            “Yes,” Subhi said, handing David his nametag and lanyard. “Several of our individual activities have winners, and there are a few prizes at the end for most activities won, most friends made—are you taking notes?”

            David was indeed jotting the prize categories on the back of his hotel map. “Just want to make sure I have everything straight. Now, what are the other categories?”

            Subhi ran through the other categories and, upon David’s request, informed him that the awards were mostly Applebee’s gift cards and one trophy for “All Around Best Partnership.”

            “Since this is a partnership award, are two trophies awarded or just one?” David demanded.

            “Just one…” Subhi blinked. “It’s intended to be displayed at your workspace—”

            “Can I see this trophy?” David requested.

            “Um…I don’t have it here…” Subhi peered around David at the line of agents that had accumulated in the last couple minutes.

            “What are the dimensions of this trophy and its general appearance?”

            Subhi gave a brief description of the trophy and, after a few follow up questions, David left the table.

            The next agent, a dark-haired man she’d seen around the D.C. office occasionally, was grinning at the retreating figure of David. “He forgot to ask about the judging criteria, Scully,” he commented to the woman standing beside him. She also looked familiar.

            “He’ll probably be back for the whole rule book in a few minutes,” the woman replied. Then she cleared her throat and focused on Subhi. “Scully and Mulder,” she identified themselves.

            “Scully…Mulder…” Subhi murmured to herself as she flipped through nametags. “Here they are…” She handed them over and, as she crossed their names out on her roster, exclaimed, “Wait—are you with the X-Files?”

            “It’s not so much that we’re _with_ the X-Files as that we _are_ the X-Files,” the man replied.

            “Nice to meet you! I’m Subhi!” Subhi pumped their hands quickly. “What happened with the missing zoo animals?”

            “The missing—” The woman rose her eyebrow. “How did you hear about that?”

            “My friend Vicky told me about—oh, shoot!” There were more agents accumulating behind them. “No time now, but come find me sometime later! I’d love to hear about some of your cases!”

            Scully and Mulder entered Presentation Room A, and Subhi dug around for the nametag of the next agent.

***

            After Mulder found them seats at the back of the room, he made three predictions about the presentation they were about to sit through: (1) the speaker would give a word’s derivation, (2) the speaker would quote either a famous writer or an American president, and (3) one of the slides would have a comic panel on it.

            “I have a prediction, too,” Scully murmured to him. “You’re not going to pay attention, and then you’re going to complain about what waste of time it was.”

            The lights turned off at that point, and a vaguely familiar woman stepped onto the stage.

            “Communication!” she called, and a slideshow clicked on, backlighting her so only her silhouette was visible. “It comes from the Latin _communicare,_ which means ‘to share.’”

            Mulder leaned his head onto Scully’s shoulder and closed his eyes. “Be a good partner, Scully, and _communicare_ the highlights with me once the presentation’s done,” he mumbled.

            Scully considered shrugging him off, but Presentation Room A was over air-conditioned, and it felt nice having a warm body leaning on her. She blinked a few times and tried to pay attention to the woman on the stage, and not Mulder’s warm breath tickling her collarbone.

            “It was Shakespeare,” the woman announced, clicking to another slide, “who said that ‘God has given you one face, and you make another for yourself.’ Let’s unpack that…”

            Scully sighed and leaned her head against Mulder’s head…

            Forty-five minutes later, half-hearted applause jerked Scully awake. She glimpsed a Far Side comic before the projector shut off, and she hastily elbowed Mulder. He yawned and stretched his legs, knocking into the chair in front of him as he did so, which woke up the chair’s dozing occupant.

            “Now,” the woman on the stage was saying, “if you look at your name tags, you’ll find that you and your partner have been assigned a number. That’s the number of your group for the weekend…”

            Mulder and Scully were group thirteen, which had one thing going for it: it was next to the coffee urn. Soon, Scully was sipping lukewarm coffee from a styrofoam cup.

            There were three other couples there: that agent David Demopoulos who had been so obsessed with the prizes, and five agents they didn’t recognize. The woman who had given them their name tags earlier stopped by to give them an envelope with instructions, which David Demopoulos quickly tore open. He took off his sunglasses (finally), and read the page of instructions.

            “Our first activity,” he announced, “is we each need to introduce our partner to the group, and provide two facts about our partner that…” his face fell, “have nothing with our jobs at the FBI.” He folded up the instructions and placed them in his suit pocket. “Who wants to go first?”

            “We’ll go!” volunteered one of the other agents, a tall, broadly built woman with thick glasses. Her name tag identified her as Claire Brown from the Dallas office. “This here—” she pointed to her fellow agent, a blonde well into a pregnancy, “is my partner Linda! She plays a mean game of tennis, and in case you’re wondering, it’s a boy!”

            Linda rubbed her belly, and informed them that Claire was an excellent cook and liked to do the crossword puzzle.

            The agents from San Francisco volunteered next. One of them was Peter Cai, the old partner that Fred had told Mulder and Scully about in the car. His new partner informed them that Peter loved long car rides and was a Pisces. Peter then told the group that his partner, Charlie, had played football in high school and had seven siblings.

            There was a lull in the introductions at this point. David was frowning at his partner, almost as if in a trance. David’s partner Danny was staring at his own shoes. Mulder was glancing back and forth between David and Danny, his lips in a faint smile. Finally, Scully spoke.

            She waved to Mulder. “This is my partner Fox Mulder. My first fact about him is…” She wished Mulder had some personal life: hobbies, a family, anything, really. Unfortunately, his entire existence seemed consumed by the X-Files, and it was difficult to pick out any fact about him that was unrelated to his job. “He prefers you call him by his last name, not his first.”

            The other agents nodded understandingly. If they’d been stuck with the name Fox, they probably would institute the same policy.

            Scully searched for another fact. Considering how close she was to Mulder, it was a surprisingly difficult task. He’d gone to Oxford? Braggy. He’d grown up on Martha’s Vineyard? Snobby. He’d seen _Plan 9 from Outer Space_ 42 times? Nerdy. She didn’t want to give the agents any reasons to look askance at Mulder. Lord knows, throughout the course of the weekend, he would give them enough reasons, himself.

            Peter Cai coughed, and Linda shifted her weight to her other side, eyeing the sign pointing the way to the women’s washroom.

            “He has pet fish!” Scully finished. Her relief at having completed her introduction was undercut by her dread at whatever introduction Mulder would give her.

            Next up, Mulder waved at Scully. “This is my partner Dana Scully. My facts about her are…” He paused, but Scully could tell that his pause, unlike hers, was not because he was grasping for some trivia. Judging from that twinkle in his eye, he was savoring this moment, stretching it to increase her apprehension, “the contents of her left pants pocket are her room key, a twenty-dollar bill, a receipt for bottled water, and unflavored Chapstick. Her right pocket is empty.”

            Scully sighed and grudgingly extracted the contents from her pocket to confirm that Mulder was correct. It really wasn’t that impressive of a trick. He knew she only kept things in one pants pocket at any one time when possible, he’d paid her back the twenty dollars earlier in the day, he’d been with her when she’d purchased the bottled water, she logically must be carrying her room key with her, and he’d seen her use the Chapstick while in the car.

            Also, since the point of the exercise had been for the other agents to get to know _Scully_ and his facts had mostly told them about _Mulder,_ he had failed at his primary objective.

            So really, not that impressive.

            But Scully seemed to be in the minority there.

            Danny applauded, Claire gasped, and Linda was so bowled over that she temporarily forgot about the baby pressing against her bladder. Only David Demopoulos was unmoved, still frowning at his partner in deep thought with his arms folded across his chest.

            “Wait a minute!” Peter Cai exclaimed, with a wide smile. “My buddy Fred told me about you! Spooky Mulder, right? You’re the guy who thinks his sister—” Peter’s face fell as he remembered the gossip, and he eyed “Spooky” warily.

            About ten seconds passed in awkward silence, and Linda was again eyeing the sign to the women’s room when at last Danny spoke.

            “I guess I’ll go now,” he said. “This is my partner David. He likes to watch _Jeopardy_ and he drinks his coffee black.”

            David was the only person left now. For some reason, he put his sunglasses back on. “This is my partner Danny,” he announced. “He lives in Chicago and he’s not married.”

            Scully found David’s introduction even less impressive than the one Mulder had given her. At least Mulder’s proved that he paid attention to her. She could have deduced those facts about Danny herself, given that his branch office city was printed on his nametag and he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

            After Linda took a break to “powder her nose,” they got started on the other activities, with David acting as their unelected leader. The first activity was blind origami, where a partner gave instructions to his or her blindfolded partner, who folded the paper. Claire and Linda’s crane was perfect, Scully and Mulder’s crane was decent, Peter and Charlie’s crane was messy, and David and Danny’s crane was...a crumpled paper ball. Subhi stopped by to pick up the cranes, apparently for a crane judging whose results would be announced on Saturday.

            Mulder leaned into Scully. “No way we’re winning that. Hope you didn’t have your heart set on Best Crane.”

            Scully assured him that she hadn’t cleared out her trophy cabinet in anticipation. “Well partner, at least we failed as a team.”

            Mulder nodded somberly. “That’s what we do best. Have you _seen_ our closure rate, lately?”

            The next game was the “emotional guessing game,” which was sort of like charades, only instead of movie titles or famous people, a partner would mime an emotion, and the other partner would have to guess.

            Scully went first, miming “angry.”

            “Perturbed!” Mulder guessed. “Nettled! Choleric! You when you find out I got our case from the _Eyes on the Skies_ web forum!”

            Their onlookers were exchanging that ‘Is he serious?’ look that had been found on Susan’s face so much during their car ride.

            Scully sighed and rolled her eyes.

            “Oh, I know that look!” Mulder was triumphant. “‘Quit joking around, Mulder, and take this seriously!’”

            “Bingo.” Scully tapped her nose.

            When it was Mulder’s turn to emote, he just stared at her expressionlessly. Scully grinned in spite of herself, and provided the answer: panic.

            Mulder lightly punched her arm. “You got it! Nice teamwork and communication, partner.”

            “Are you kidding?” burst David, who had just had a difficult time guessing Danny’s admittedly mediocre attempt at “jealousy.” “He wasn’t making any expression at all!”

            When Mulder turned over the piece of paper that had “panic” written on it, his face had an expression that Scully would have described as “smug,” had David insisted she identify it.

Scully was skeptical that the blind origami and emotion guessing games had taught them anything about teamwork or communication, but she could at least see the application of the final activity: a script with the dialogue between two fictional agents, Phoebe and Ira. The conversation started off friendly (Phoebe and Ira discussing a case they were working on), but ended poorly, with them both shouting that they wanted new partners. The activity itself was a group discussion identifying where the conversation had gone south and which agent was at fault.

            “Phoebe shouldn’t have compared Ira to her old partner, like that,” was Linda’s opinion. “That’s what turned the conversation into a competition.”

            “But Ira interrupted her twice before she did that,” Danny pointed out. “I know being interrupted—”

            “—Ira interrupted her because Phoebe was repeating herself!” exclaimed David. “She was wasting her partner’s time!”

            “Dave,” Danny snapped, “seriously?”

             “What do you think, Dana?” asked Charlie, in an obvious attempt to distract from the argument brewing between the two Chicago agents.

            “I think,” Scully had to speak loudly to be heard over David and Danny’s bickering, “that Phoebe was repeating herself because she felt like Ira wasn’t listening to her…” Noticing the twist of Mulder’s lips, she turned to him. “What? You don’t agree?”

            He shrugged. “No, I agree.” He paused. “But…the way she was shooting down his ideas, I don’t think she was listening to _him_ either.”

            Scully folded her arms. “Mulder, I think she was _listening._ I think she just didn’t _agree.”_

“She was just saying he was _wrong,_ ” Mulder insisted. “She wasn’t giving him the benefit of the doubt! It was like when we were in Florida and I thought the rangers were being attacked by the swampsquatch and you said—”

            “—Swampsquatch?” demanded Linda. All the agents except David and Danny, who were still arguing, were looking at Mulder and Scully curiously.

            “Right, swampsquatch,” confirmed Mulder. “Also known as the skunk ape or Florida bigfoot—a hominid cryptid known for its foul odor. Sightings of it span several southern states—”

            “—it doesn’t exist,” interrupted Scully. Memories of sloshing through a Floridian swamp with Mulder flooded her brain…ugh. She could smell it like it was yesterday. At least she hadn’t lost a dog on _that_ foray through a swamp.

            “Scully!” Mulder groaned, as if she was being the difficult one. “How can you say that? After the pictures—”

            “It was a _bear,_ Mulder!”

            “That doesn’t explain the smell!”

            “The swamp explained the smell!” She glanced at the raised eyebrows the other agents were sporting, stepped closer to Mulder, and hissed, “Mulder, do we have to reopen this argument _now?”_

            “Oh, right!” Mulder laughed sarcastically. “I wouldn’t want this disagreement to get in the way of our _communication and teamwork seminar!_ Scully, you _saw_ the footprints! _”_

            “So, Pete!” Charlie demanded loudly. “Where do _you_ think the conversation went wrong?”

            Peter’s gaze flicked between the script, David and Danny, and Mulder and Scully. “Which conversation?” he murmured.


	4. Six Agents Talk in a Bar

            “Tomorrow’s activities start at 10 am!” Agent Victoria Romero called to the agents filing out of the room. “And now please join us in the bar for the wine and cheese mixer!”

            Once the last agent left the room, Victoria sat on the edge of the stage, chugged from a nearby water bottle, and leaned back on her elbows.

            “Man, am I glad that’s over!” she groaned. “Thank God Gina and Kevin are running tonight’s mixer. I just want to fall into my bed.”

            “You can’t do that just yet!” exclaimed the only remaining occupant of the room, Subhi. She had been collecting discarded origami paper and placing it in the recycling bin. Now, she hurried to a crate she’d tucked into the corner of the stage and extracted two small boxes. “You haven’t eaten your cupcake yet!”

            Victoria resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Sometimes it felt like Subhi had missed her calling as a planner for children’s birthday parties. The whole “everybody take a cupcake and put a candle in it and make a wish” thing might be appropriate in the context of “Jessica’s 9th birthday party,” but was a bit childish for an FBI Communication and Teamwork seminar. Victoria had arranged for Gina and Kevin to distribute the cupcakes and candles to the agents at the mixer rather than at the presentation mostly because she hadn’t wanted Subhi to be around to witness the raised eyebrows and sniggers that were sure to occur once a bunch of FBI agents discovered their last activity for the day was “making a wish.”

            “Fine, fine…” Victoria sighed. “Come on, let’s do it…”

            Subhi took a seat next to her and opened up the boxes to reveal one chocolate cupcake and one vanilla cupcake. “Which one do you want?” she asked.

            “Vanilla,” Victoria replied immediately, not because she had a preference, but because she knew Subhi preferred chocolate, but would never take it if she thought Victoria might prefer it.

            “Okay…” Subhi pulled out one of the candle packages she’d purchased earlier today from Mystic Treasures. “Get a look at this packaging, Vicky!” she giggled, pointing to a label on the slim box. “What a hoot…”

            Victoria picked up the box and squinted at the minute labeling. “‘Wishing Candles,’” she read aloud. “‘Limit one wish per candle, one wish per person. Wishes may take up to 24 hours to take effect. Wishes must be spoken aloud to take effect. Wish responsibly.’” Good grief. She could imagine the guffaws that were currently erupting in the bar.

            She opened up the box and out slid two glittery rainbow candles, like a My Little Pony peppermint stick. She stuck a candle in each cupcake and lit each candle with her Zippo lighter.

            Subhi wrinkled her nose as she always did when she spotted the lighter. “When are you going to quit smoking?” she demanded. “You said it was your New Year’s resolution.”

            Victoria shrugged. “There’s always next year…”

            “Vicky, do you even _want_ to quit?”

            “Sure, I do,” Victoria replied. It wasn’t like she _liked_ those lectures from her doctor, or Subhi’s suspicious sniffs when she entered their office, or that coil of tension that started whenever she went too long without a cigarette… “Fine,” she said, blowing out the candle, “I wish I would quit smoking.”

            Subhi was mollified, and Victoria was saved from whatever lecture she’d been in for. Subhi looked at her own candle thoughtfully. “Now what do I want?” she asked.

            “You’d know better than I would…” Victoria replied, starting to eat her vanilla cupcake. “Winning the lottery? Being able to fly?”

            Subhi shook her head. “I wish…” Her face lit up. “I wish for this seminar to be unforgettable.” She blew out her candle.

            Once Subhi finished eating her cupcake, they started cleaning the room in earnest. As they did, Victoria noticed an extra candle box in Subhi’s crate.

            “You have some extras?” she asked Subhi.

            Subhi, now on the other side of the room folding chairs, nodded. “Those two agents from Minneapolis never showed—they called me this morning and said they just had a big break in their case!” she called.

            “You should give those extras to those Bragg kids,” Victoria suggested. “These candles look like the kind of things kids would like.”

            “Good idea!” Subhi hurried over, grabbed the candles, and stepped towards the doors. “They would probably love them! I’ll go do that and be back in a few minutes!”

            Victoria continued collapsing the chairs by herself.

***

            The bar was packed. Scully could barely squeeze between a group of agents from the New York office and what seemed to be a reunion of an old task force who had worked together five years ago to bring down a drug kingpin. She had lost Mulder almost immediately. As soon as they had entered the bar, some old coworker of Mulder’s had seized him, the agent delightedly slurring to his companions, “Spooky Mulder! He’s that miracle profiler I told you about! Show ‘em, Spooky! Profile me!”

            Mulder’s brief profile (“You’re drunk, Harris.”) met with laughter, and Harris’s friends had circled Mulder, blocking Scully, nearly knocking her into a group of agents behind her comparing photos of their children.

            Everywhere, it seemed, old friends and associates were reuniting. Not for the first time, Scully wondered what it would be like to be one of _them._ She had been sucked into the X-Files so early, she hadn’t had the chance Mulder and these other agents had to forge connections with colleagues. What few relationships she had with other agents had withered since she’d joined the X-Files, either from neglect or from her association with Spooky Mulder.

            It must be nice to have a social circle. Maybe if she’d had one, she could have gotten someone to take care of Queequeg when Mulder had dragged her to Georgia at the last minute. And then Queequeg wouldn’t be dead, and when she returned after a long day at the office, she would have a furry little guy excited to see her instead of an empty apartment.

            Eaten by an alligator—what a horrible, gruesome way for that poor dog to go. And on the ride over, Mulder had used it like a punchline to put Susan off.

            She glared at the dark-haired head only barely visible over Harris’s bald crown. Mulder had thought he was _so_ funny, lecturing Group 13 about various Floridian swamp monsters—or what about him in that car, giving Susan the strangest answer to every question? He’d eagerly adopted his “Spooky Mulder” shtick, never considering that maybe, Scully would have _liked_ a nice conversation with Susan and Fred. Maybe it was easy for _him_ to write Susan and Fred off because he’d already given up on a normal existence with friends and a personal life, but that genius psychologist with a degree from Oxford should have realized that _Scully_ hadn’t yet given up hope of having _friends_ and a _family_ and a _house_ and a _dog_ —

            Oh, who was she kidding? As long as Mulder and the X-Files were in her life, none of those hallmarks of a healthy, normal existence were in the cards for her…

            Even if Mulder had kept his mouth shut on the car ride, it wasn’t as if her life would permit her to become friends with Susan. What, would they get drinks in between Scully having to run out to a top-secret government facility in Texas, and then getting taken to Antarctica?

            “Dana! Yoo-hoo! Dana!” As if on cue, Susan waved Scully over to a high table in an alcove of the bar. She and a brunette Scully didn’t recognize sat unsteadily on stools. Six empty shot glasses and several mostly eaten cupcakes sat next to four partially-melted-but-extinguished candles.

            “Hi Susan!” she greeted them, and was promptly introduced to Agent Candace “Candy” Lubben, who worked in community outreach at the Richmond regional office. Apparently, Susan and Candy had gone through the Academy together. Candy’s partner Isaac had just left with Fred to get them “something to soak up the alcohol.”

            “Looks like you’ve made your wishes,” Scully commented, nodding to the candles.

            “Winning the lottery,” Susan pointed to herself sloppily. Scully wondered how many of the empty shot glasses Susan was responsible for.

            “A tall, dark, handsome man and me falling in love with each other!” Candy replied. Her eyes roved around the room, lingering at the enclave of New York agents. “I should be able to accomplish that, I think…”

            “Candy just got dumped!” Susan shouted.

            “Suzy!” Candy shrieked, batting at her friend. She had probably been aiming for her shoulder, but she wound up batting her left breast instead. “I did not get dumped! It was a mutual thing!”

            “He was cheating on you!”

            “So, we _mutually_ decided to break up! On a voicemail. That he left me.” She slumped on the table, and picked at some left over frosting. “Have you ever been cheated on?” she asked Scully.

            Scully shook her head. She decided it would be unwise to admit that she had once been the “other woman.” “He sounds like a jerk,” she commented, which seemed a safe conversation choice.

            Candy nodded emphatically at this. “He is! Suzy didn’t say how smart you were!” She turned to Susan. “You didn’t say she was smart!” she shouted.

            “I didn’t say she wasn’t!” Susan exclaimed. She pointed to a guy in the corner. “What about that guy?” she asked.

            The man was of the Christian Bale style of looks that Scully had never found personally appealing, but she had to admit he was objectively good-looking. He was also married.

            “He’s wearing a wedding ring,” Scully pointed out.

            “You are _really_ smart!” Candy clamped her hand on Scully’s arm, smearing a little vanilla frosting on her jacket sleeve. “Do you want to hear the message Bryce left me?” Before Scully knew it, a phone had been jammed at her ear, and she heard a man saying, “So it looks like you know now. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, Candace, and I’m sort of glad you know—I’m relieved, because the truth is, I love Janet, and I want to be with her. So, this is good-bye.”

            Scully handed Candy the cell phone. “He’s an asshole,” she stated.

            “Such an asshole!” Susan seconded. She pointed hopefully to another possible contender, but Candy wasn’t paying attention. Instead, she was staring at Scully earnestly.

            “And I wasted _six_ years of my life on that asshole! Six years! I should have realized what an asshole he was when he wouldn’t commit! You know, _I_ proposed to _him_ but he just kept on saying ‘the time wasn’t right,’ whatever the _Hell_ that means…I mean, I turned 33 last September! I think the time is freaking right if I want to have babies! Dana! Dana!” she gripped Scully’s arm more tightly. “Are you married?” she demanded.

            Scully shook her head.

            “Promise me you won’t waste _six years_ of your life on a guy who’s just a _dead end!”_ She used her free hand to smash into the remains of a red velvet cupcake. “Do you promise?”

            Dana was saved from having to promise this by the arrival of Fred and a short man Scully assumed was Isaac, Candy’s partner.

            “Guess who brought pretzels!” Fred announced, arriving at the table with a bowl of pretzels and a bowl of peanuts.

            “And water!” the other man shouted. He handed a glass of water to Candy. “Drink up!”

            “I don’t want water!” Candy shouted.

            “Trust me—you need water!” he insisted. He plunked a straw into the glass and Candy reluctantly began sipping from it. He then started prying her hand from Scully’s arm. “And why don’t we let the nice lady have her arm back…” Once he succeeded in liberating Scully’s arm, quick introductions were made. Scully had correctly guessed his identity. “Did she make you listen to Bruce’s voicemail?” he asked.

            Scully nodded. “What a jerk,” she said, since comments to that effect had done so well for her so far.

            It had evidently been the right thing to say. Isaac nodded approvingly at her. “Such a jerk. I never liked that guy. How hard is it to remember a birthday?”

            “I guess it must be hard…” Candy murmured, lifting her straw and dropping it back in her glass, “when you have to remember _Janet’s_ birthday, too…and who _knows_ how many other girls there were whose birthdays he had to remember…”

            “There you are!” A hand was laid on Scully’s back, and soon Mulder was pressing against her, crushed by a crowd of agents from Boston who were migrating to the bar. He handed her a bottle of beer, she noted that he was holding a bottle for himself, already half drained, along with the bag of cupcakes and candles they had received upon entering the bar. “I was looking all over for you!" he told her, shouting a little to be heard over the surrounding babble. "Thought maybe you hitchhiked back to Washington!”

            “I think you got _me_ confused with _you,_ ” Scully replied, sipping from her bottle.

            “Fox!” Susan exclaimed, though a mouth of pretzels and peanuts. “Candy, Isaac, meet Dana’s partner Fox!”

            “Mulder,” Mulder corrected Susan for what had to be the fourth time, and he shook Isaac’s hand. He reached out to shake Candy’s hand as well, but no hand was forthcoming. Instead, she was just staring at him…staring at him like…

            Like Noah must have stared at the olive leaf?

            Like Romeo must have stared at Juliet?

            However she was staring at Mulder, Scully didn’t like it. She could practically hear Etta James crooning “At Last.”

            “Hi Fox…” Candy breathed. Her gaze flitted to his left hand, which he was now resting on Scully’s shoulder, their bag of still uneaten cupcakes and unlit candles resting against her arm. Then Candy’s gaze returned to his face and soupy smile spilled across her lips.

            “Mulder,” he corrected, frowning at her. Then his eyes swept over the empty shot glasses. He grinned at the table’s other occupants. “She’s not going to remember meeting me in the morning, is she?” he asked.

            “She got dumped!” Susan said by way of explanation.

            “Suzy!” Candy shrieked, swatting at her friend and knocking over a mostly empty glass of water in the process.

            Scully took that as an opportunity to make her and Mulder’s excuses, and she dragged Mulder away, barely giving him the chance to grab his beer bottle from the table. “You should say thank you!” she called as they stepped out of the bar. Now that they were in a mostly deserted hall, her voice suddenly sounded very loud.

            “Thank you,” Mulder replied. He kept on holding her hand as they strolled through the hotel hallway, past the door for the pool where a couple of the Bragg children were splashing each other.

            Scully laughed. “You don’t even know what you’re thanking me for!”

            “As if I _need_ a reason to thank you…”

            Scully felt pleasantly warm even though she’d barely had a drop to drink. She ducked her head and studied the patterned carpet. Where were they even walking? Not towards their rooms, which weren’t even on this floor…

             “So,” Mulder said after a few more steps, “what should I thank you for?”

            “I saved you from having to listen to the break up voicemail that Candy’s ex Bryce left her,” Scully explained, now able to lift her eyes to look at Mulder.

            Mulder let out a low whistle. “A break up through a voicemail…what a monster.” He squeezed Scully’s hand and stopped walking. “Speaking of monsters…” he began.

            Oh no. He was doing this _now?_ She’d just started having a good time!

            “No, Mulder,” Scully shook her head. “Absolutely not.”

            “But I just got off the phone with the Junction City Morgue,” Mulder whined. “They say four people have been killed and—”

            “—Skinner was _quite clear_ that this time, we can’t get out of—”

            “—a three-headed dog, Scully!” Mulder exclaimed. He released her hands to grip both her shoulders. The bag of cupcakes again swung into her arm, and she could feel the condensation from his beer bottle. “Like Cerberus! A three-headed dog!”

            “Mulder, _no!”_ Scully shook free of his grip. “After you played hokey on the last one of these seminars so we could chase _mothmen,_ we are _not_ leaving this one!”

            “But Junction City’s not far away—we can investigate it for a few hours and make it back for—”

            She rolled her eyes and started to head to the elevator. “You and I both know that once we get there, you are _not_ going to come back here. We’re not going, Mulder! They’ll just have to call animal control!”

            She pounded the “up” button, and the elevator promptly opened. She stepped inside and in followed Mulder, describing the strange teeth marks on the victims.

            “That’s all very interesting,” she eventually cut him off as the elevator deposited them on the third floor, “but I don’t see why this can’t wait until Sunday afternoon when the seminar’s over. Admit it—you just don’t want to be here.” She charged down the hallway without even looking where she was going. Mulder caught up with her in two long strides.

            “I can’t imagine why _that_ would be…” Mulder mumbled. “I always wanted a paper crane…this seminar is a _waste of our time,_ Scully!” He grabbed her arm. “Our rooms are _that_ way.” He pointed to the right.

            Scully turned to the right and headed down the hallway, noting the descending numbers as she did. 333. 331. 329.

            “Don’t tell me you’re not bored!” Mulder said. He jogged ahead of her and leaned against her door (321) so she would have no choice but to talk to him. “I _know_ you, Scully. You think this is a waste of our time!”

            “Mulder,” Scully sighed, “don’t you do enough talking for _yourself_ without talking for _me,_ too?”

            Mulder just raised his eyebrows and looked at her steadily.

            “Okay, yes!” Scully snapped. “Of course this is a waste of our time! Making _origami?_ Guessing each other’s _emotions?_ ” She shoved him aside and jammed the keycard into the reader. When the reader flashed green, she yanked the card out and entered her and Susan’s room. Swigging from his beer again, Mulder followed her into her room, apparently not caring that in doing so he was violating FBI protocol.

            “Or the wishing on candles,” Mulder shook the bag he was still carrying. “Don’t forget that.”

            “Right!” Scully grabbed the bag, placed the cupcakes on the bureau, and stabbed each of them with a glittery, rainbow candle. Mulder handed her a matchbook he’d found on top of a Sheraton stationary pad. She struck the match and lit the candles.

             “There are children at slumber parties out there doing more worthwhile activities! _”_ she announced.

            Mulder nodded in satisfaction. “That’s right. Let it out, Scully.” He was grinning widely, as if he’d been looking forward to this blow-up.

            “But maybe,” Scully continued, “I want to be bored for a couple days! For once we have an assignment that’s _normal!_ Make small talk with coworkers about their children, not chase down mothmen or Flukeman or serial killers or _swampsquatch!_ Why can’t you let me have a _nice, normal weekend_? I wish you would be _normal,_ Mulder!” She’d said the last few words with such force that the candle extinguished. She looked down at the vanilla cupcake. “I guess that was my wish,” she sighed.

            The grin had been wiped off Mulder’s face. Now he just looked concerned. “Okay, Scully,” he said quietly. “I hear you. I know I’ve been playing up Spooky Mulder today—I’ll cut it out for the rest of the weekend, I promise.”

            “Thank you,” she sank down on one of the beds. She suddenly felt very tired.

            “Well…” Mulder picked up his cupcake and blew out the candle, “I should be going before the camp counselor catches me in the girls’ cabin…see you at breakfast?”

            “Sure, nine am,” Scully confirmed. She was relieved that after her outburst, Mulder still seemed to be in a jokey mood. “Mulder?” she called, causing him to halt by the door. “What did you wish for?” she asked curiously.

            “Nothing.” He bit into his chocolate cupcake, causing some crumbs to fall to the carpet. “I couldn’t think of anything, but I really wanted cake,” he explained. Some chocolate frosting was stuck to his nose. “I figure I’ll hold onto my wish—save it for a rainy day.” He winked at her. “Good night, Scully!” He shut the door behind him.

            He’d left his beer bottle behind. Scully considered calling after him, but there were only a couple of gulps left. She chugged the last of his beer and tossed it into the trash, leaving her own bottle untouched.


	5. Three Agents Have Breakfast

            At 7:12 am, Fox Mulder woke up. He could tell it was 7:12 because of the digital clock on the bed stand. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to even tell it was morning, since heavy curtains blocked all sunlight.

            He could hear two sounds: Fred Partridge’s sinus-clearing snores and the chime of Fred’s cell phone.

            The cell phone had woken Mulder up, though it had no effect on Fred.

            Mulder rose from his bed just in time to see the cell phone’s screen flash one last time before the caller was directed to Fred’s voicemail. The screen said “Judy.” Fred’s wife, Mulder remembered. Fred had talked about her a little last night—she transcribed medical records part-time. Fred thought that those hours spent typing descriptions of accidents and medical conditions weren’t good for her. She fretted about Fred and their kids whenever any of them were foolhardy enough to do something dangerous like fly on a plane, ride in a motor vehicle, or eat while talking. Judy and Fred had a rule that they had started back when Fred had had a legitimately dangerous field agent job: During the day, Fred was to check in with Judy every four hours. Just a quick call: “Hi honey! I’m still alive.”

            He snorted to himself just thinking about it. Imagine if he and Scully instituted that policy. What a pain that would be.

            Although, he realized, considering how often one of them called the other outside of work hours to discuss a case, they probably _did_ check in every four hours.

            Okay, he admitted, so it was mostly just him calling Scully. He’d never been great at limiting work thoughts from nine to five.

            Speaking of…

            He checked his phone to see if he’d received any calls from the police at Junction City about the three-headed dog. Nothing. He wasn’t sure if he wanted there to be updates or not. On one hand, he didn’t want the case to progress while he was stuck here at this glorified sleep-away camp. On the other hand, maybe if there was more activity in Junction City, he could convince Scully that their talents were needed _there._

            Their talents _investigating crimes_ and _solving mysteries._ Not _folding origami._

            What a waste of time.

            But apparently, this seminar meant _something_ to Scully. He tried not think of the implications of her wanting a normal slice of life, far from the X-Files and Spooky Mulder. She deserved a nice weekend, certainly. But a nice weekend at the Sheraton Convention Center making small talk with people about their children’s flute lessons?

            He _knew_ Scully. That wasn’t what she wanted.

            Maybe he could try to find an X-File somewhere nice…arrange to stay there for a few extra days, give her a little vacation. He’d toyed with the idea before, but despite his best efforts, he never _had_ managed to find a legitimate X-File in Hawaii.

            Maybe set his sights lower? Vermont or the Wisconsin Northwoods. There was probably _something_ that went bump in the night in those places.

            Mulder lumbered over to the bathroom to brush his teeth and shave. By the time he’d finished, it was 7:33, and Fred’s cell phone was ringing again. Fred swung his arm over his face and for a moment, Mulder thought he had awoken, but his snoring continued.

            According to the hotel map in Mulder’s folder, there was a pool here. Maybe he’d get a swim…he dug through his suitcase for his suit, but it was so dark, he was going mostly by touch.

            Sorry Fred, Mulder thought as he pushed the curtains aside, allowing the brilliant sunlight to blaze through the room, eliciting groans from the now semi-awake agent. But Fred should probably be calling Judy back anyway, before she sent out a search party.

            Standing by the window, Mulder gazed at the eastern horizon, at Kansas City’s sprawl of hotels, strip malls, and barbeque restaurants. Just another day in Kansas City…

            There was nothing exceptional or even interesting about the view, but somehow Mulder found himself fascinated by it, fascinated by the tiny cars rolling down the streets, fascinated by the ant-sized people filling up at the gas stations. Watching the daily routines of these strangers was almost hypnotic…in fact, he felt very calm right now, calmer than he’d been since—a vague memory of a smoke-filled dorm room—

            He was jolted from his trance by his cell phone. He picked it up—Junction City.

            “This is Agent Fox Mulder,” he said as he clicked it on.

            It was the police chief. There had been another attack. The chief was desperate—at his wit’s end.

            “Sorry,” he said, his own voice sounding strange, as if it was coming from a great distance. “But I don’t think we’re going to be able to make it. I’d advise you to contact animal control.”

            Then he hung up, cutting short the police chiefs frantic yelps.

            “Three-headed dog,” he murmured to himself. “What a crackpot…” He grabbed his swimsuit and his goggles, and stepped over to Fred’s bed, nudging him awake. “Rise and shine, Fred!” he sang. “You should give your wife a call. I think she’s worried about you.”

            “Oh, thanks…” Fred mumbled, blinking at the sunlight. “Sorry about the phone—did she wake you up?”

            “Don’t worry about it,” Mulder assured him. “I slept great!”

            He felt great. It was going to be a great day.

***

            By 8:45 am, Scully had finished dressing, brushing her hair, brushing her teeth, and applying make-up. She was ready to face the day.

            Susan was not.

            “Oh God…” the slumped woman in the twin bed closest to the window groaned. “What did I _drink_ last night?” Susan slowly eased herself from her pile of blankets and blinked at Scully. “Did I do something stupid? I haven’t drunk like that since Allyson was born…”

            “I doubt you did anything stupid,” Scully assured her, flossing her teeth because, hey, why not, she had 15 minutes before she’d agreed to meet Mulder. “Fred and Isaac were looking after you. They dropped you off here at about midnight.”

            “Mmmm…” Susan slumped back on her bed. “Thank God for Fred. He’s such a good partner.” She yawned and slapped a pillow on her head. “How much time do I have?” she asked in a muffled voice.

            “An hour and fifteen minutes until the first activity,” Scully answered. “Do you want some aspirin?”

            “Dana, you’re a doll,” Susan replied.

            A piece of floss hanging from her lower teeth, Scully filled up a glass of water and placed it along with two aspirin on Susan’s bedside table. Susan’s arm snaked out from under a blanket and grabbed the aspirin. She choked them down without water.

            “You should drink some water,” Scully informed her, resuming her flossing.

            “I will…” Susan promised her. “Jeez, what a night…” she mumbled. “I must have listened to that damn voicemail message 20 times before the end of it…” She slowly lifted the pillow from her face, sat up in bed, and drank from the tumbler Scully had provided. “Candy was so upset…” She chugged the last of the water and joined Scully at the sink. Susan filled the tumbler and sipped from it some more. “Fox had better watch out…”

            Scully paused her flossing. “What do you mean?”

            “You saw the way she was looking at him,” Susan mumbled. “Or did you? I forget if you were there then…” she frowned.

            “I was there,” Scully confirmed.

            “Then you saw it—she looked at him like he was a tall drink of water.” As if to punctuate her words, Susan gulped the last of the water and filled the glass up again. She turned on the vanity lights and squinted at her reflection, before starting to laugh. “Don’t I look like a prize with my makeup still on!” She wet one of the washcloths and began scrubbing her face. “Don’t get me wrong,” she said, her voice again muffled, “Candy’s great—” She stopped what she was doing and shot Scully a look that could be described as suspicious. “You and Fox aren’t—you’re not _involved_ are you?”

            How many times had Scully been asked that question? Too many times for it to fluster her like it used to. She confirmed that they weren’t involved with a shake of her head.

            Susan accepted her denial at face value—which was nice, because people didn’t always do so—and continued. “Good, just wanted to check. Anyway, as I was saying, Candy’s great and all, and Fox could do much worse, but she’s not in a good place right now.” She began brushing her teeth. “She _really_ thought she and Bryce were going to wind up married in the suburbs with children. So, the next guy who she dates had better watch out because he might get _hooked.”_ She spat into the sink.

            “Well,” Scully stepped to the door, “I need to meet _Mulder_ ,” she wondered if this hint might stick, “for breakfast, so I should be going…”

            “Right,” Susan waved her away, and started her second attempt at removing her eyeliner. “Say hi to Fox for me…”

            Fred was the one to open the door to 323 when she knocked. “Hi Dana,” he greeted her. He was fully dressed, and was holding a cell phone to the side of his head. High-pitched chatter could be heard from the other end of the line. He held up his index finger to her and tilted away, speaking in the phone. “Listen Jack—could you please put mommy on the phone? No—no, don’t put Mary on—” He grimaced before plastering on a fake smile as if his children could see him through the phone. “Oh, hi, Mary, sweetie! Mary—listen, I need—mmhmm, that’s very interesting…” He clamped his hand on the bottom of the phone and turned back to Scully. High-pitched chattering was still audible. “Sorry about that,” he whispered. “What can I do for you?”

            When Scully told him she was there to meet Mulder for breakfast, he looked confused.

            “Mulder headed down an hour and a half ago,” he told her. “I think he was going to get a swim in—yes sweetie!” He raised the phone to his ear again. “Of course I was listening—Jack shouldn’t have done that—could you please put mommy on?” He waved goodbye and shut the door.

            So Scully headed downstairs. She figured she might as well peek at the indoor pool, since it was on the way to the breakfast area. Maybe Mulder was still swimming laps—but no, she was met with disappointment. A couple of FBI agents she vaguely recognized were in the pool, and a group of Bragg family members were using the hot tub, but no Mulder.

            She had a flash of suspicion—what if he had gone to investigate that three-headed dog after all—but upon entering the breakfast area, her fears were allayed. There was Mulder, sitting at a table.

            Sitting at a table _with_ someone.

            Sitting at a table with Candy.

            Scully stood by the door, studying the odd scene before her. Mulder had toast and orange juice. Candy had fruit salad and coffee. That was all normal enough. Candy had that stupid, besotted expression she’d worn last night when looking at Mulder. Again, normal. Candy wasn’t exactly the first woman who’d gotten goo-goo eyes when looking at her partner. A case in Kroner, Kansas came to mind.

What _wasn’t_ normal was that Mulder _also_ wore that stupid, besotted expression. His smile was warm and relaxed, his eyes hooded—he leaned in to Candy and whispered something, and she giggled, her hand gently swatting at and lingering on his arm. He looked down at the hand and his smile only widened.

            Was _this_ what Mulder in love looked like? She’d always wondered.

            Mulder _in love?_ She shook her shoulders. What was she thinking, jumping to conclusions like that? He was having breakfast with someone and being _pleasant,_ which is what she’d entreated him to do last night. She was blowing this way out of proportion.

            She’d been accused in the past of being possessive about her partner—maybe that was causing her to misinterpret the situation.

            She shook her shoulders once again and grabbed some yogurt and cranberry juice. A few agents nodded at her as she passed them—faces she recognized from Washington, and Linda and Claire from Group 13.

            But Mulder didn’t nod at her. It was a strange feeling—normally in a situation like this, she would feel Mulder’s eyes flick towards her, the slight though constant attention he always paid her, even when he was focusing on something else, be it a lecture from Skinner or a dead body. Sort of like static on the radio, it was always there in the background, which is how he’d been able to list everything she had in her pockets yesterday.

            But today—nothing. He hadn’t glanced in her direction. He didn’t seem to be aware that she’d entered the room at all. When she sat down at the third seat of the table, he actually jumped.

            “Oh, hi Dana,” he greeted her. “You remember Candy from last night?”

            _Dana?_ Since when did Mulder call her _Dana_?

            “Hi Candy,” she put on a smile she hoped looked natural and extended her hand for a shake.

            Candy shook her hand, though Candy’s green eyes barely left Mulder. “Hi Dana…” she murmured absently. “Nice to meet you again…”

            Scully peeled the foil top off her yogurt and swirled it with a plastic spoon. “So Candy,” she asked, lifting her plastic spoon and stabbing it at a chunk of strawberry, “are you originally from Richmond?”

            “Candy’s family is from New Hampshire,” Mulder informed her. “A little town called Epton. Her mother’s a teacher and her father was a dentist, but he retired five years ago. She has three siblings—two brothers, who both work for a company that manufactures spark plugs, and one sister, who’s between things right now. She went to college at Swarthmore and majored in English.”

            Candy giggled and ducked her head.

            “Wow, Mulder,” Scully murmured, privately wondering if she would be able to keep her yogurt down, “what did you do, pull her file?”

            Mulder didn’t answer her. Instead, he leaned in and whispered something to Candy, who giggled again—Scully was getting sick of that giggle, a sort of manic, breathy laugh was one step away from hyperventilation.

            But Mulder didn’t seem to mind it. Instead, he reached out and pushed a dark curl of Candy’s hair behind her left ear. “You should wear your hair back,” he informed her. “That way I can see your eyes better…”

            Oh brother…Scully considered chucking her yogurt into the trash can. There was no way she would be able to eat anything.

            “Excuse me…” Standing above them was Isaac, who was watching the scene with as much distaste as Scully felt. “Candy, we just got a call from Richmond General—I think you should give them a call back…”

            Scully hoped for Candy’s sake that part of this weekend’s Communication and Teamwork Seminar covered making proper eye contact, because once again, Candy failed to so much as glance at the new arrival. Now she was gazing at Mulder’s hands, which were lying mere millimeters from her own. “I’ll call them back later…” she breathed.

            “No, Candy, I really think you should call them back _now,”_ Isaac said firmly, waving his hand in her line of sight like she was a distracted child. “They said it was important...”

            Candy sighed as if walking out of the room and dialing a number on her cell phone was a great imposition. “Fine,” she groaned. She rose from her chair and gave Mulder a peck on the cheek. “See you soon, Fox,” she breathed and sashayed from the room, swaying her hips more than was necessary.

            Isaac shot Scully a ‘What on Earth is going on?’ look and followed his partner out of the room.

            “Bye Candy,” Mulder murmured, his eyes following her until she disappeared from sight. Then his eyes turned to Scully, and he was met with a sour expression.

            “Mulder,” Scully said icily, “I hope you have a good explanation for the scene I just witnessed.”

            “Hmm?” Mulder rose an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

            Now Scully considered throwing her yogurt at Mulder’s face. “You know what I mean,” she hissed. She’d made excuses for Mulder’s casual flirtations before. She didn’t think he realized what a smile on the face of a handsome man with an FBI badge could do to a woman, and it had all been innocent enough until now. But this was a bridge too far. “That woman just got out of a six-year relationship under _terrible_ circumstances. You getting her hopes up like that is just _cruel!_ I don’t know what _joke_ you think you’re— _”_ She stopped speaking when he started laughing, and then she shot him a look of pure indignation. “You think this is _funny?”_

“A little,” Mulder admitted. He gripped her hand and squeezed it. “Dana, you’ve got me all wrong. I appreciate that you’re looking out for Candy—I really do, but I assure you, I’m not joking around.” Then Mulder said some words Scully had never expected to hear from him. “Dana, I’m going to marry that woman!”

            Scully would have said it felt all the air had just been sucked out of the room, except that there seemed to be a roaring noise somewhere, and there was no sound in a vacuum. _What_ had he said? She couldn’t have heard him right.

            “What?” she eventually choked out.

            “Dana,” Mulder leaned closer to her, “I think I’m in love. Isn’t Candy _amazing?”_

“Stop joking, Mulder!” Scully ordered. “This isn’t funny!”

            “I’m not trying to be funny, Dana,” Mulder insisted, gazing at her earnestly. “I mean it.”

            “ _Why_ are you calling me ‘Dana’?” Scully demanded. “Mulder, what’s going on?” She narrowed her eyes. “The poster on our office wall—where did you get it?”

            “Are you trying to test me?” Mulder laughed. “You got it from Karin Berquist. I’m the real me. I just…” he shrugged. “I don’t know…this morning I woke up and I felt like a new man! Just—while I was looking out the window, everything just seemed to _shift_. Have you ever felt like that?”

            “No…” Scully said, and clamped her hand on Mulder’s forehead. He didn’t _feel_ hot, but maybe—

            “I’m fine!” Mulder shook her hand off. “I just had an epiphany!”

            “That epiphany being…?”

            “That I’m 38!” he exclaimed. “And it’s time to stop living my life like I’m in a science fiction saga—aliens?” He shook his head and laughed. “Aliens, Dana? What was I thinking? Government conspiracies? _Swampsquatch?”_

“What do you—look, Mulder,” Scully gripped his hand again, “I obviously offended you last night when I asked you to be normal and I—”

            “I wasn’t offended!” Mulder insisted. “Look, Dana,” he took a deep breath and looked at her without blinking, “I _promise_ that I’m being sincere right now. I had an epiphany—it had nothing to do with you—and I realize now that all this Spooky Mulder and X-Files stuff won’t make me happy and it’s time to change. Trust me.”

            “I—wait,” Scully froze. “The X-Files—Mulder—”

            “—Fox,” Mulder interrupted her. “We’ve known each other for six years, Dana. Don’t you think it’s strange that we’re on a last name basis?”

            “But you _hate_ your first name!”

            “It _is_ an odd name,” Mulder admitted, raising his finger to his chin and tapping it thoughtfully. “Maybe I should change it…or maybe I should just go by William instead. I have a normal middle name—why haven’t I just gone by _that?”_

Privately, that was a question Scully had wondered more than once. But after all these years, after all the times they had rescued each other from serial killers or crashed through the woods screaming for each other, “Mulder” seemed more intimate than “Fox” or “William” through sheer frequency of use.

            “ _Mulder,”_ Scully said insistently, “you mentioned the X-Files weren’t making you happy—what are you talking about? You _live_ for the X-Files!”

“Well…” Mulder dropped his eyes to the “Explore Missouri!” brochure nestled between the salt and pepper shakers, “it’s like Fred said yesterday in the car—you can’t exactly raise a family when you’re gallivanting across the country chasing down monsters…and let’s face it, our closure rate is _abysmal.”_

Mulder had said a lot of things over the years that Scully had a hard time believing. Vampires, ghosts, psychic connections, regression hypnosis—but sitting here in the Sheraton Convention Center’s continental breakfast room, this took the cake. She’d had to defend the value of the X-Files to Skinner, Kersh, and even her own family, but she _never_ thought she would have to defend it to _Mulder._

            “You can’t quit!” she gasped. She squeezed his hand. “Mulder, we do important work! Think about all the killers and monsters we’ve caught—maybe our individual cases defy explanation sometimes and we can’t tie them up in a neat bow at the end, but think of all the _lives we’ve saved.”_

“But what about _our_ lives, Dana?” Mulder demanded. “Do you know the last time I went on a _date?”_

Scully shook her head.                                       

            “ _Neither do I!”_ Mulder exclaimed. “I honestly don’t remember—and I bet it’s been a while for you, too…”

            Did getting a tattoo with Ed Jerse count as a date? Sitting in a car with Sheriff Hartwell? There was a vague memory of a dull night in a restaurant about five years ago—some nice guy talking about his child, and all she could think about was Mulder and the X-Files.

            Certainly, her dating live since being assigned to the X-Files was less impressive even than the X-Files’ closure rate.

            “But what about your sister, Mulder?” Scully demanded.

            “Samantha’s gone,” Mulder said, his expression somber. “She’s not coming back. And she wouldn’t want me to put my life on hold chasing specters.”

            Scully gaped at the man in front of her. Who _was_ this person? Had he ever _met_ Mulder? “What about ‘if we quit now, they win?’”

            “Dana…” Mulder said softly, “does this feel like winning? Look at these other agents,” Mulder ordered her. “They’ve settled down—have mortgages, spouses, children. And what do I have? A tank of fish?” He leaned forward. “I sleep on a water bed with mirror above it that I don’t even remember purchasing!”

            Scully frowned. She’d known about the water bed, but… “There’s a mirror above it?”

            The old Mulder would have made some innuendo here (“You want to see for yourself?”), but the new Mulder just nodded. “Right—I think it’s time for me to buy an actual bedroom set like an _adult._ I’m telling you, Dana,” he rose from his chair and swigged the last of his orange juice, “it’s a new day and a new Fox Mulder!”


	6. Two Agents Talk in a Parking Lot

            The new Mulder—sorry, _Fox—_ didn’t hold doors open any more. He let the door Activity Room C slam behind him, and Scully only barely managed to catch it before it smashed into her face. It was easy to figure out why he had been so distracted: he was scanning Activity Room C excitedly, on his tiptoes as if that was even necessary. However, soon his shoulders slumped. Evidently Candy had been assigned a different room.

            Good. Scully didn’t think she could take any more of this, whatever “this” was.

            Soon all of Group 13 had assembled except for Pete Cai. Charlie explained that Pete had run off about twenty minutes ago. “He said something came up, but he’d be back as soon as it was taken care of.” Charlie looked concerned. Evidently Pete wasn’t the kind of agent who often ran off suddenly without giving his partner all the details.

            “Well,” Mulder replied unconcernedly, “I’m sure he’ll be back soon. Why don’t you join Dana and me until he comes back?”

            Charlie looked surprised but grateful that Mulder was so welcoming. All the other agents appeared to be in excellent moods. David and Danny were chatting congenially to each other, their previous disagreement either forgotten or resolved, and Linda was remarking to Claire that she felt excellent—hadn’t felt this good since before her pregnancy.

            “Actually Mulder,” Scully requested, “do you think you and Charlie could do the first activity without me? There’s a phone call I need to make.”

            “Sure thing, Dana!” Mulder chirped along with a thumbs up, and Scully slipped out of the room.

            She scrolled through her cell phone’s contacts, and soon Skinner’s voice was heard on the other line. “What is it, Agent Scully?” he asked with a resigned sigh. “Has Agent Mulder left the convention?”

            “No,” she assured him, “but I think maybe he should…” She launched into an account of Mulder’s odd behavior. When she finished, Skinner seemed less than impressed.

            “I can’t say I agree with you that any of this indicates Agent Mulder is experiencing a mental breakdown. It’s obvious what’s going on,” he replied calmly. “You argued, and he’s trying to get back at you. Agent Mulder’s a smart man—he knows how to cause you alarm.”

            “But sir,” Scully replied, “carrying on a flirtation with another agent _to this degree_ is not like him, and he’s talking about transferring from the X-Files.”

            After an awkward pause, Skinner resumed speaking. “As I said, Agent Scully, _he knows how to cause you alarm._ This is Agent Mulder we’re talking about—I’m sure he doesn’t really intend to transfer.” He sighed. “I’m sorry to be so blunt, Agent Scully, but I’m short on time right now.”

            She could hear talking and applause on the other line. And then a song she recognized…

            “Sir, are you at a graduation ceremony?”

            “For my nephew,” he confirmed. He shifted to a quieter voice. “None of us thought he would ever graduate, but he finally did it.” His voice returned to normal. “Look, I don’t have time to hold the hands of my agents every time one of them acts immaturely. I admit this is uncharacteristic behavior for Agent Mulder, and if you want me to speak with him when you’re back in Washington, I will do so, but until then, you two have to stay at the convention. You are very overdue for the seminar—and from what you’re saying, a communication and teamwork seminar might be exactly what you need right now.”

            “But sir,” Scully insisted, “I _know_ Mulder and I don’t think he’s lying—”

            “I really have to go,” Skinner cut her off. “Nathan’s almost up. If you have problems, talk to Victoria Romero. She does HR in D.C., and she’s running the event. But there’s nothing I can do where I am, and you two _need_ to attend this seminar. I’ve been making excuses for you long enough.”

            She could hear a voice on the other end announce: “Nathan Wilcox-Skinner!” and then a click as Skinner hung up on her.

            Well, great. It looked like her plan of removing Mulder from the convention for a psych eval was scuttled.

            She returned to the room just in time to see David and Danny high-fiving each other over a completed jigsaw puzzle.

            “Way to go, buddy!” David was exclaiming. “You were amazing!”

            “We did it!” Danny crowed. “As a team!”

            They high-fived again. Scully looked around for cameras, since she suspected she was viewing the making of a communication and teamwork instructional video. There was no way too people would ever genuinely be that excited about finishing a jigsaw puzzle.

            But there were no cameras. A few agents, Mulder included, were applauding them, and one of the agents running the activity—Subhi, was it?—was holding a stopwatch.

            Scully walked over to Claire and Linda. “They look happy,” she commented, nodding to the Chicago agents who had just completed a third high five.

            “They set the FBI’s all-time record for the fastest 300-piece jigsaw puzzle,” Linda told her. “They were moving so fast, I couldn’t believe it…like two blurs…”

            “They sure seem to be getting along now…” said Claire, with a slight frown on her face. “Certainly is different than yesterday…”

            “Okay, gang!” Mulder clapped his hands together with a big smile, “Subhi just told me that our next activity is trust falls! Everybody buddy up!”

            Linda leaned into Claire and whispered something. Scully couldn’t hear her, but she could guess what she was saying: “Speaking of different than yesterday…”

            Trust falls went without incident—as if an FBI agent was just going to let another FBI agent fall to the floor? The next activity took place outside: a maze made of poles connected by “Police Line Do Not Cross” tape. One agent had to walk through blind folded while the other directed them via walkie talkie. It was the sort of activity Scully would have expected her and Mulder to be good at. Somewhere in the X-Files cabinet, there was a case she’d rather not remember in which Mulder had talked her through a sewer system.

            And yet, standing in an empty lot next to a Sheraton Convention Center on a sunny Saturday, she and Mulder just couldn’t seem to get on the same page. She was the one walking through the maze, with Mulder feeding her confused directions (“Go left—no, my left. Right. No, I mean, _go_ right—not that right—your other right!”). She had never felt so out of sync with him. It was as if his very way of speaking was different: he didn’t speak as sedately as he normally did, and he placed pauses where she didn’t expect them. Consequently, it was difficult to tell what exactly he meant: was the left turn he had mentioned the one she had just taken, or was there another left turn now? And whenever he told her to take a certain number of paces in any direction, he was off the mark, apparently having forgotten to adjust for her shorter stride. It was a small detail, a mistake most people would have made, but it was exactly the type of consideration that normally would have occurred to Mulder.

            They got the worst time of Group 13’s three participating couples, a whole five minutes longer than Claire and Linda’s time. David and Danny beat even Claire and Linda handily. David had seemed to walk through the maze as quickly as he would have had he not been wearing a blindfold at all. Subhi excitedly informed them that they had just broken another FBI record, and the Chicago partners celebrated with another flurry of high fives.

            “You were amazing, man!” Danny shouted. “You zipped through it!”

            “Thanks to _you,_ buddy!” David yelled, smacking Danny’s back. “You were a great set of eyes!”

            They then erupted into a spontaneous cheer: “Windy City Win! Windy City Win!”

            Frowning at the two agents, Scully remarked to Mulder that they hardly seemed like the same people they had met yesterday. He just shrugged.

            “The seminar is working, I guess,” he suggested. “Or maybe we just caught them on an off day yesterday.”

            Scully had been hoping that Mulder would provide some theories that were a little less superficial or run-of-the-mill—or at least a witty observation. Come to think of it, had Mulder even made a single joke today? She couldn’t think of one.

            “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” Scully asked. “You don’t seem like yourself.”

            “I’m not myself,” Mulder replied, smiling. “I told you: I feel like a new person. Stop worrying.”

            Scully immediately disobeyed the order.

***

            1:12 found Mulder and Scully sitting in the hallway waiting for their appointment with their office’s HR representative. Each partnership had an appointment scheduled; their appointment had been supposed to start at 1:00, but representative was late, so Scully and Mulder lingered outside of Activity Room F, Mulder serenely reading an issue of the _Kansas City Star_. He didn’t look concerned about their appointment. Why should he be? Everything was normal. _He_ was normal. So, so normal. In a Mike Brady sort of way. Chipper, thumbs ups, probably contemplating taking a mortgage out on a split level in the suburbs…

            She was reminded of their case in Arcadia…only now, it didn’t seem like an act.

            Maybe she _should_ tell the HR rep about what was going on. Maybe she would be able to convince the representative that this behavior coming from Fox Mulder was indicative of a severe mental breakdown.

            And then what? What was Scully’s plan, here? Institutionalize Mulder? If it really _was_ a mental breakdown, that would probably be for the best, but how could she be sure? Maybe it was just as Mulder said: he’d had an epiphany. Or a mid-life crisis. People _had_ those.

            But Mulder _loved_ the X-Files.

            So, was Skinner right? Was this an immature stunt to get back at her for asking him to be normal the other day?

            Maybe he would drop the act if she offered him something he couldn’t resist.

            “Do you still want to investigate the three-headed dog case?” she asked him. It would be worth ditching the rest of the convention if it meant bringing Mulder to his senses.

            He snorted and glanced up from his paper, appearing amused at the follies of a Mulder who was a day younger. “I can’t believe what I was thinking.” He shook his head and looked back at his paper. “No thanks, Dana. You were right—there’s nothing there. I told them this morning that we wouldn’t make it out.”

            She tried to identify any sting in those words, any emotional undercurrent that might indicate he was acting out as Skinner believed, but there was nothing. “And you’re serious about leaving the X-Files?”

            “Well…” he considered this. “I think so.”

            “And what do you want to do instead?”

            “Candy mentioned that the Richmond office was expanding their background check staff,” he told her, still skimming through the classifieds. “I was thinking that might be a good fit for me, since fortunately I have experience in that field…”

            Scully could have asked a lot of questions here: You’re moving to Richmond? You’re going to willingly do background checks? You’re saying something _positive_ about having been kicked off the X-Files last year?

            Any of these would have been legitimate, logical questions to ask. But logic seemed to have escaped Scully for a moment, because the question that she blurted was, “You talked about this with _Candy?”_

“During the break earlier,” Mulder confirmed. “When you disappeared.”

            Scully nodded. During the break, she’d telephoned one of the researchers on call at D.C. to try to find any medical reason that might explain Mulder’s sudden change. There had been plenty of possible explanations, ranging from drugs to a railroad spike through the brain, but nothing that had seemed likely given the facts.

            “My honey bear’s a wonderful girl, Dana…so nice and pretty and _warm!”_ Mulder sighed.

            Scully fought the urge to rip the newspaper from his hands and smack him with it. Using the phrase “honey bear” was worth a smack _alone,_ and she wasn’t wild about the rest of his sentence, either. _Nice_? She hadn’t exactly seen Candy help any old ladies across the street in her time at the convention. What had she done that was so _nice?_ And _pretty_? She supposed she was, but not remarkably so. Dark wavy hair, a generic face—she wasn’t sure what her eye color was, though she bet Mulder would rhapsodize about it given the chance. But frankly, when it came to physical appearance, Mulder had Candy outclassed. And _warm?_ What did that even _mean,_ really?

            “Oh?” she said stiffly. “You learned all that in _fourteen hours_?”

            “You think I’m being impulsive,” Mulder deduced. “But Dana,” he grabbed her hand, “sometimes you meet someone and you just _know,_ you know?”

            “No.” Scully pulled hand away. “I don’t _know._ You’re acting _crazy,_ Mulder.”

            “First of all, it’s ‘Fox,’” Mulder reminded her, “and second of all, _I’m_ not crazy. That man yesterday who wanted to lead you on a wild goose chase searching for a three-headed dog—he was crazy.”

            “Both of you can be crazy,” Scully snapped. “But honestly, I prefer crazy Mulder to crazy Fox. You can’t _honestly_ be considering leaving the X-Files—after everything we’ve been through!”

            “This is better for me—and it would be better for _you!”_

“You want me to move to Richmond and do background checks with you?”

            “Or stay in D.C. and get a lab job,” Mulder suggested. “Or go back to medicine—there are so many things you could do, Scully! Why have you wasted six years of your life chasing thin leads, putting yourself in danger?”

            Scully gaped at him, half expecting to see her brother Bill in his place. “Why have I _wasted_ six years of my life, Mulder?” she demanded. She jumped from her seat. “Because _you_ convinced me that the work we do is _worthwhile!_ And now you’re saying it’s a _waste?”_ She marched to a door leading outside and yanked it open. “I’m getting some fresh air.”

She slammed the door behind her and stepped onto the parking lot, her hands clutching her sides. She wished she could kick something—a waste basket, a soccer ball, Candy…

            Instead, she settled for taking deep, slow breaths.

            _Waste? Richmond? Honey bear?_

“Bad day?” The speaker was the woman who had given the presentation yesterday. She was smoking a cigarette—or rather, holding an unlit cigarette. Her other hand held a Zippo lighter.

            There was no point in denying the woman’s deduction. Scully was sure her bad day was written all over her face. “I’ve had better,” she admitted.

            “Sorry to hear that,” replied the woman, whose nametag announced her to be Victoria Romero of the D.C. office. Scully recalled meeting her once during a very uncomfortable sexual harassment seminar a few years ago.

            Scully watched as Victoria flicked the Zippo lighter on, and brought the flame to the cigarette. However, the cigarette remained unlit.  The woman groaned and chucked the cigarette to the ground, where it joined five other discarded, unsmoked cigarettes.

            “Damn things won’t light,” Victoria snapped. “Must be a defective pack…”

            “Does that happen?” Scully asked curiously.

            “Not in my experience,” the woman replied. “But it’s happening today…God, I would kill for a smoke. My head is aching…” She pulled another cigarette from her pack and handed it to Scully.

            “Oh, I don’t smoke,” Scully told her.

            “I’m not offering,” the woman told her. “Just—could you hold it while I light it? Maybe the issue is the angle.”

            It was a strange request, but it was a strange day, so Scully acceded. This time, Victoria succeeded in lighting the cigarette, but no sooner had Victoria grabbed the cigarette and brought it to her lips than the cigarette extinguished, and all smoke disappeared.

            “What the _Hell?”_ demanded Victoria, throwing the cigarette to the pavement and stomping on it. “Is the universe playing some _joke_ on me? Has the American Lung Association upped their game? I haven’t been able to smoke _all day!_ I have been out here for _twenty minutes_ just trying to light a _damn cigarette!”_ She kicked one of the tires of a nearby car. “Oh, Subhi’s going to _love_ this!” She kicked the tire once more. “So,” her eyes flicked to Scully’s name tag, “Dana, I—” Her eyes widened. “ _Shit!_ My next appointment is with you, isn’t it? How long have you been waiting for me?”

            Ah, so this was the HR rep who had had them waiting in the hall. “Not too long,” Scully lied. “My partner’s in the hall, so we’re ready to start whenever you are.”

            “Well,” the woman leaned against the car, “tell you what—you’re clearly upset about something. Why don’t we have your part of the meeting right now?”

            “In this parking lot?” Scully asked. True, there was no one else here, true the weather was nice, true, she wasn’t exactly looking forward to facing Mulder again in the hallway, but still, what a strange idea.

            “Sure,” the woman shrugged. “If it’s all right with you. It’s a nice day, and I don’t really want to go back under the fluorescents right now—they just make my migraine worse. Let me just duck in and tell your partner—Fox, right?—what’s going on. Then I’ll do him after, and then both of you. That’s how this works. Individual meetings and then a meeting together.”

            Without waiting for Scully’s confirmation, Victoria disappeared into the hotel, and soon emerged, carrying a few folders, a notebook, and a pen. Then she leaned against the hood of a nearby Subaru station wagon. Scully wondered if Victoria was always this informal, or if this was a byproduct of withdrawal. Scully leaned against the Ford that was parked next to the Subaru.

            “Before we begin,” Victoria stated, putting on a pair of reading glasses, “I just want to remind you that I’m not a therapist. I’m happy to discuss any issues you have, of course, but I’m more here to take a diagnostic and see if there are any services I can recommend.” Her voice was soothing yet professional now, as if she’d slipped into another skin.

            Scully nodded.

            “Okay…” Victoria skimmed through a paper in the folder, “Dana Scully, looks like you’ve been assigned to the X-Files for six years on and off…working with Fox Mulder most of that time.” She jotted something in her notebook and looked back up. “Not many agents work in such small departments. Only two people. Do you prefer its small size?”

            Did she? She’d never really thought about it before. “I don’t have much to compare it to,” she admitted.

            “You and Agent Mulder must be very close…”

            Scully looked at Victoria sharply, but Victoria’s expression was bland. No, she hadn’t been implying anything. She was a professional. Scully was paranoid.

            “We are,” Scully confirmed. “After experiencing what we’ve experienced together, I don’t know how we couldn’t be.”

            “Right…I gotta be honest, Dana—can I call you Dana?”

            Scully nodded.

            “Right—I’m going to be honest, Dana,” Victoria tapped a paper with her pen, “I ran through some of the highlights of the X-Files, and it’s pretty disturbing stuff. Fat-sucking vampire, sentient computers, human lightning rod...”

            Victoria trailed off, but Scully remained silent and waited for Victoria to articulate an actual question. After a long pause, Victoria got the hint, and continued. “You looked upset when you came out here. Does it have something to do with a case you’re working on?”

            Scully shook her head. “No, nothing like that.”

            “Does it have something to do with Agent Mulder?”

            Scully paused. To tell the truth or not to tell the truth?

            Well, why not? Skinner had recommended she speak with Victoria about her concerns. Maybe it could help. She didn’t see how it could hurt.

            She gave a brief account of Mulder’s strange behavior, emphasizing his wish to leave the X-Files and relocate to Richmond. “It’s just not like him,” she explained. “He loves the X-Files. In fact, his _life_ is the X-Files. And now he just wants to leave?”

            Victoria hummed sympathetically. “It can be a shock when we discover that someone close to us wants to move on—”

            “No,” Scully shook her head. “You don’t understand. I _know_ Mulder. He doesn’t want to move on.”

            Victoria referenced one of her files. “It looks like Agent Mulder is 38 years old,” she observed. “He has very little family. It’s not uncommon for agents in his situation to reprioritize starting a family.” She flicked her eyes up. “You yourself once applied for adoption. Surely you must have realized that adopting a child would have necessitated some professional changes.”

            “That was an entirely different situation,” Scully sniffed, “as you’d know if you’d read the entire file.”

            “I _did,”_ Victoria answered. Seeing Scully’s raised eyebrow, she assured her that she wasn’t passing any judgment on the validity or plausibility of the phenomena described in the X-Files. “That’s not why I’m here,” she told her. “But the fact remains that Agent Mulder’s plan of relocating to a branch office and taking a desk job is a normal career move for many agents at this stage in their lives.”

            “But that doesn’t explain his sudden infatuation with another agent,” Scully pointed out. “Or his atypical behavior. I know how Mulder _acts,_ and that man in there,” she pointed in the direction of the hotel, “is not acting that way!”

            “And how does Agent Mulder act?” Victoria asked, still scribbling away.

            “He’s…” Scully paused to marshal her thoughts, “Agent Mulder is curious and passionate. He loves what he does, and I’m convinced that any decision to leave the X-Files is one he would regret.”

            Victoria had stopped writing. She looked at Scully with a slight frown. “You have a very high opinion of your partner,” she said finally.

            “I do,” Scully agreed, trying to speak as calmly as possible. “We are very close. So, when I tell you that he’s acting strange, it’s not just because I feel like I’m being left behind. It’s because I _know_ him.”

            “I hear you…” Victoria made another note in her notebook. “I will certainly keep this in mind for my appointment with Agent Mulder—I mean it. But I don’t want to neglect _you_ during our meeting now.” She looked up. “Dana, can we put Agent Mulder aside in our conversation? Can you do that for me?”

            Scully frowned. “But I thought the purpose of this meeting was to discuss our partnership.”

            “That’s _a_ purpose,” Victoria agreed. “You certainly spend a lot of time with Fox Mulder, more than most people spend with their partners, due to the unusual nature of the X-Files. But there’s more to Dana Scully’s life than Fox Mulder.”

            Sometimes it didn’t feel that way. But she supposed that had been her own choice.

            What was it she’d said once? ‘Not everything’s about you, Mulder.’

            Victoria was still speaking: “I’d like to know more about your support system. When you have a problem, who do you discuss it with?”

             “Mulder’s the person I discuss my problems with,” Scully replied, annoyed. What was the purpose of this line of questioning?

            “Not a work problem,” Victoria corrected. “A problem in your personal life—say, an issue with your home or family.”

            “Mulder,” Scully repeated. “We discuss everything.”

            “No one else?”

            “My mother,” Scully added. “Sometimes my brothers…”

            “What about friends?” Victoria prompted her. “From work or otherwise?”

            “I’ve sort of…” Scully sighed, “lost touch with most of them…since I started the X-Files.”

            Victoria’s quick nod gave Scully the impression that Victoria was just receiving confirmation of something she’d suspected. Victoria sighed and put the pen down once more.

            “Dana,” she started, “before our appointment I looked over some notes that previous members of the HR team have made about your partnership with Fox Mulder. I also looked at comments agents from other departments have made. I want to make it clear,” she said quickly, before Scully had a chance to object, “that I am only here to make recommendations. I also want to make it clear that by all accounts, you and Agent Mulder do excellent work, and are an exceptionally strong partnership.”

            Scully restrained a smile. Apparently, Victoria Romero had neglected to look at Kersh’s notes. Either that or she was very tactful and a little fast and loose with the truth.

            In either case, Scully was waiting for the ‘but’ that was sure to follow this praise.

            “That being said,” Victoria continued, “several of the notes expressed concern that your relationship with Agent Mulder could be described as ‘codependent.’ Do you know what that means?”

            The smile that Scully had been keeping at bay snuck onto her face. “You’re accusing me of being in an unhealthily clingy relationship where my identity is consumed by a psychologist,” she summarized. “Of course I know what ‘codependent’ means.”

            “I’m not accusing you of anything,” Victoria said. “But I would be less concerned if you had a strong support system apart from Agent Mulder.”

            On one hand, Scully resented the implication. It was difficult to hear someone imply her life revolved around a man. It simply wasn’t true—she was enormously fulfilled by her work, and although Mulder was an integral part of that, she was on the X-Files for her own reasons.

            On the other hand, wasn’t Victoria more or less saying the same thing Scully had been thinking before? That Scully needed to go out and make some friends?

            “Here.” Victoria handed her a pink flier. “Down in the basement, you probably don’t see the announcement board all that often. This is a group for women agents who meet once a week to do some activities and discuss the issues they face both in and out of the office. I myself have made many friends through this group.” The flyer had a cartoon of women at a shooting range spraying lead into targets. “They go to museums, go bowling, see plays, that sort of thing. It’s a great way to meet people outside of the office and discuss problems with people who are having the same issues you are.”

            Scully looked at Victoria wryly. “You said you’d read some of the X-Files. You really think there are people having the same issues I am?”

            “Well,” Victoria admitted, “maybe not _exactly_ the same.”


	7. One Agent Figures It out

            Scully sat in the hallway, flipping through the _Kansas City Star_ that Mulder had found so fascinating. She couldn’t say she shared his fascination. A referendum, a film festival at some old theater downtown, an interview with a state representative…nothing all that interesting to an outsider. She next turned to the classifieds, a frequent source of entertainment for her and Mulder when they were in a small town. How many hours had they spent in rental cars with one of them driving and the other reading aloud the lonely hearts or the bizarre specifications renters made for prospective roommates? They generally did so at the end of a case, when there were no mysteries left to unravel, no opinions left to canvas. Just her and Mulder on the road with a snapshot of strangers’ lives.

            But the classifieds today weren’t entertaining. The lonely hearts were depressing, the apartment listings were bare bones, and help wanteds were monotonous.

            Mulder and Victoria were in Victoria’s makeshift office in the parking lot. Every once and a while she could see Mulder pace by the glass door. He was smiling, and speaking about something enthusiastically. If Scully were to guess, he was cataloguing his honey bear’s numerous virtues.

            _Nice. Pretty. Warm—_ ha!

            She ruffled the newspaper, guilt niggling at her. She shouldn’t be thinking about Candy this way, especially not in light of what she’d just discovered.

            When she’d stepped into the hallway after her meeting, she’d found Mulder speaking with Candy, clasping her hands and pressing them to his cheek. Candy had been sitting in the chair Scully now occupied, fat tears rolling down her face. At first Scully had been hopeful—maybe the two had come to their senses and ended this ridiculous, spontaneous, love affair before it even began.

            But as it turned out, Candy’s tears had nothing to do with Mulder, and everything to do with Bryce. Candy had called back Richmond General and discovered that Bryce had been in a car accident early that morning and was now in critical condition. However Bryce had ended it, he and Candy had been together for six years…

            A page of the newspaper slipped from her fingers, and she leaned down to pick it up, and forced herself to read the ads with new determination. A honky-tonk bar with trivia on Tuesdays, a flea market, and barbeque restaurant after barbeque restaurant…

            Scully was jerked from admiring the ad for Auntie Irma’s Shotgun Wedding Chapel (“I do NOW!” an enthusiastic cartoon couple proclaimed) by someone clearing their throat. She looked up to find a man standing over her. His nametag identified him as Harris Gifford—Mulder’s friend from last night, she recalled, the man who had pulled him aside as soon as they had entered the bar.

            “Excuse me,” he dropped to the seat next to her. “You’re Dana Scully, right? Mulder’s partner? The other agent on the X-Files?”

            She confirmed she was and shook hands with him. Her gaze hovered at the top of his head, where he was wearing a _Kansas City Royals_ baseball cap. It didn’t exactly fit with his suit and tie.

            “You’re wondering about the cap,” he deduced. “That’s what I’m here to talk to you about. Since you’re on the X-Files, you handle the weird stuff, right?” He took his cap off revealing…

            A head of blond hair. Only that wasn’t right, because just yesterday, he had been bald. At least…she thought he had been…

            “I don’t understand…” she said slowly.

            “I’m bald!” he exclaimed. He flashed her his FBI badge which showed, yes, a bald man. “I haven’t had hair like this since I was 25! But then I woke up today and _it was back!_ I swear it’s not a toupee!” To illustrate his point, he pulled at his hair. Then he ducked his head and shoved it in her face. “Grab some and yank it—see for yourself!”

            “That’s not necessary…”

            “No—I mean it!” He seized her hands and placed them at the top of his head so she could feel that—yes, this was real hair. She quickly returned her hands to her lap.

            “You just woke up this morning and it was there?” she asked, frowning. “That’s not possible.”

            “I _know!”_ he nodded eagerly. Harris turned to the left—Isaac had just entered to the hallway, so Harris jammed his cap over his head, and lowered his voice into a whisper. “And then I tried to shave it off but it grew back! Right away!”

            “Why would you shave it off?”

            “Because _I’m bald!”_ He goggled at her like it was obvious. “Everyone’s going to think this is a toupee or I got plugs—this is crazy! I wanted my hair back, but not like _this!”_

            “Well…” Scully stared at the hair peeking from under the Kansas City Royals cap, “this is…amazing.”

            “Is _that_ all you have to say?” Harris demanded. “How did this happen? What’s happening to me?”

            “I…I don’t know…” Scully was at a loss. “There are lots of methods of growing hair back, of course, but they’re snake oil. There’s no _cure_ for baldness. This is unheard of…” She could hear her cadence quickening. “We should take a blood sample—get you to a hospital—they’ll want to study you…”

            “Whoa, whoa!” he held up his hands. “I’m no lab rat! I don’t want to be prodded and probed like a _freak!”_

Scully bit back her reply that as of this morning, he had _become_ a freak. “Agent Gifford,” she said instead, “something _incredible_ has happened to you. Don’t you want to find out what the scientific explanation is?”

            “Not if it means becoming a scientific experiment!” he yelped, jumping from the chair. “You’re worse than Mulder—at least when I told _him,_ he just didn’t believe me! Stay away from me!”

            He then bolted down the hall, passing a bemused Isaac and two of the Bragg children, who were eating their way through a stack of what must have been thirty chocolate bars and washing it down with grape soda.

            Isaac took the seat Harris had been occupying. “What’s going on with _him_?” he demanded, staring at the retreating figure.

            Scully sighed. She could only hope that Harris would come to his senses and see this for the breakthrough it was. Until then, she wasn’t going to explain to person after person that he had beaten male pattern baldness. “Just jumpy,” she lied. She nodded to the door across the hall, the door through which Candy was having her one-on-one interview with Richmond’s HR rep. “She’s been in there for a while, hasn’t she?”

            “Yes, well…” Isaac slumped lower in his seat, “they have a lot to discuss, what with Bryce’s break up and subsequent hospitalization and then her sudden romance with Fox Mulder—what is going _on_ with that? They’re acting crazy!”

            Isaac hadn’t made much of an impression on Scully before, but suddenly, Scully found that she liked him quite a bit. Finally, someone else realized what lunacy was taking place.

            “I can’t explain it,” she agreed. “This is not how Mulder normally acts. I barely recognize him.”

            Isaac nodded enthusiastically. “And Candy—she’s not normally _this_ impulsive. You haven’t seen her at her best this weekend, but normally she does _not_ jump into things…” He sighed. “I hope they both come to their senses…love at first sight? Come on!”

            “Did Candy say she was in love?” Scully asked, her voice sounding pitchier than she would like. So far, she’d only had Mulder’s side of the relationship.

            “Yep,” Isaac nodded again. “Well…” he sighed, “on the bright side, at least her wish came true. Your partner _is_ tall, dark, and handsome…Hell, maybe Susan will win the lottery, too…”

            Scully sat up in her seat. “What did you say?” she asked sharply.

            Isaac looked at her warily. “It was a just a joke…” he said. “Because—you know—last night, Candy wished on that stupid candle that she and a man who was tall, dark, and handsome would fall in love with each other. And now it’s happened.”

            Scully chewed the inside of her cheek, her eyes looking past Isaac at nothing in particular. “And I wished for Mulder to be normal and now he’s talking about quitting the X-Files, getting a desk job, and settling down in the suburbs…”

            “Uh…” Isaac sounded unsure whether he was supposed to be participating in this conversation or not.

            “Isaac!” Scully’s eyes locked onto him. “What was your wish?”

            Isaac sank lower in his seat and scratched the back of his neck. “Nothing…” He looked like a child asked a question in class when he hadn’t done his homework.

            “What was it?” Scully asked sharply.

            “It was stupid…”

            “This is important!” Scully leaned forward, somehow towering over the taller man. “Tell me what your wish was now!”

            “I wished for Bryce to be in a world of hurt!” Isaac exclaimed. He then let out a long breath and straightened in his chair. “You know, it actually feels good to admit that…” he said, grinning. “Once I heard the news today, I started feeling guilty, which is _crazy,_ because it’s not like I _wanted_ Bryce to be hurt _really,_ I just—where are you going?”

            He asked this question because Scully was now marching out of the hall. “To the gas station!” she shouted, not bothering to elaborate further.

***

            Scully had never bought a lottery ticket before. She’d internally referred to them as the “idiot tax” more than once, and now, she impulsively grabbed a bag of sunflower seeds and a roll of Wint O Green Life Savers so it wouldn’t be quite so obvious that she had come to the gas station specifically to purchase a ticket for the Missouri State Lottery.

            The cashier gave her the bills and pennies that comprised her change, and asked her if she wanted to borrow a dime.

            She blinked at him.

            “To scratch your lotto ticket,” he explained.

            “Oh, no…” she stuffed the ticket into her pocket. “It’s not for me.”

            She reentered the Sheraton lobby, streaking past five men lugging instruments and amps (members of the Houston Stars Country Western Experience, apparently, announcing that their tour van had just broken down and offering to pay for a room by putting on a show). She streaked past the pool (closed because two children had vomited a dozen candy bars into it) and arrived at a clump of FBI agents congratulating David and Danny, whose crumbled ball of origami paper had somehow just won Best Crane. She hopped up and down to see over the crowd, and finally spotted Susan. She then ducked into the crowd, and emerged yanking Susan along with her.

            “Dana!” Susan gaped at her. “What’s wrong?”

            Scully pressed the lottery ticket and a quarter into Susan’s hands. “I’ll explain later,” she promised. “But first, just do me a favor and scratch this lottery ticket—I bought it for you!”

            “I—I don’t understand—”

            “ _Just do it!”_ Scully demanded, not caring how crazy she must sound.

            Susan evidently judged it best to placate her, so she used the proffered quarter to scratch the lottery ticket.

            Cherries. Cherries. Cherries.

            Susan had just won the lottery.


	8. Two Agents Nauseate Three Other Agents

            “Candy,” said Fox Mulder after some serious consideration, “I’ve decided I want to change my name.”

            “If you want to, I think that’s a great idea, schmoopie pie!” Candy agreed. She was leaning her head on his shoulder, and she took this opportunity to kiss the edge of his mouth. “What to?”

            “Bill,” he decided. Bill was a nice, solid name. Bill wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. And in a way, he was already named Bill, since his middle name was William. He’d always steered clear of the name before…Bill Mulder was his father, but at 38, wasn’t it time to leave some of his baggage behind? “Do you like it?” he asked. He was 99% sure that “Bill” was the right choice, but if Candy didn’t like it, he’d change it to something else in a heartbeat. Bob. Tom. Sam. Chris. Jim. Whatever she wanted.

            “I think it’s wonderful!” she crooned. “Bill!” she tested it out. “It’s like that song!” When Bill shot her a confused look, she sang some of the lyrics with the honeyed voice of an angel. _“Bill! I love you so, I always will. I look at you and see the passion eyes of May, but am I ever gonna see my wedding day?”_ She kissed the edge of his mouth again. “That can be our song!”

            “It doesn’t have to be, snuggle puss,” Bill murmured, barely able to articulate words because of the half-kiss in which he was participating. “I saw this ad in the classifieds—”

            There was a theatrical cough on the other side of Activity Room D, and Bill looked at the room’s only other occupants: Candy’s friend and Dana. Dana was scowling at them, but Candy’s friend had been the one coughing to get their attention.

            “I just heard from Richmond General,” the woman informed them. “They say Bryce is still in critical condition.”

            Candy leaned her head on Bill’s chest. “Poor Bryce…” she sighed.

            “That’s okay, honey bear,” whispered Bill. “We’ll get through this together.”

            Candy nodded and kissed his neck.

            Bill never thought he’d feel this way. Like a balloon was expanding in his chest, and he wasn’t sure whether he wanted it to pop or just get bigger and bigger.

            Candy was the whole package.

            Smart? Check. She said the smartest things. Just a couple hours ago, when gazing into his eyes, she had said that he had an old soul. Wasn’t that smart? Not just everybody could tell that Bill had an old soul. That required intelligence—heck, that required _wisdom._

            So smart.

            Nice? The nicest. At lunch, she’d shared her Diet Coke with him, plunking two straws in it so they could sip from it together like two kids at a malt shop. She didn’t have to do that. That had been so _nice._

            Warm? The warmest. She hadn’t stopped smiling at him. Within 24 hours of meeting him, she’d told him that she loved him. With Candy, he had finally met a woman who loved him as much as he loved her, and she wasn’t afraid to let him know it. Just thinking about it slapped a big smile on his face.

            Pretty? Try _beautiful!_ Hair that cascaded down her back in dark waves, green eyes that put emeralds to shame, the smallest, most delicate wrists, and adorable freckles that sprinkled across her nose, only visible if you _really_ looked.

            Bill had _really_ been looking.

            And she said she loved him? The black sheep of the FBI who had lived a lonely, bachelor existence until now? She was able to look past his damaged reputation, past his years of recklessness, and still cradle his head in her hands and whisper to him softly about the life that they would build together?

            He spared a moment to pity the rest of the world. No one had ever loved like him, and no one had ever _been_ loved like him. Love in the music, films, and literature of the world was a pale imitation.

            Poetry came close, but even poetry was eclipsed by that wonderful, magical woman.

            “ _Candy…”_ he breathed and stroked her face.

            _“Bill…”_ she breathed and stroked his.

“Eesh, I wish they’d get a room…” Candy’s friend was saying. She was staring at them with disgust—or jealousy. It must have been jealousy.

            “No,” Dana replied, studying them with the same expression. “You don’t.”

            Poor Dana. He knew a part of her still yearned for the type of life he would be starting with Candy. It made sense she was jealous. But it was her own fault—he had told her to leave the X-Files before, and she had refused. If she really wanted to settle down and raise children—

            Bill stopped that line of thought. Scully and children was a complicated subject, and he didn’t want to devote that much mental energy to someone who was not Candy.

            The door to Activity Room D whipped open, and out of the corner of his eye Bill saw Candy’s partner enter. “I just got confirmation from those Chicago agents you told me about!” Candy’s partner yelled. “David’s wish was to win every event, and Danny’s wish was for David to show him some respect!” There was a lull in the conversation, and then Candy’s partner said, “Have they been like this the whole time? Just stroking each other’s faces?”

            Dana sighed. “Just be glad that’s _all_ they’re doing.”

            Let them judge. They’d be doing the same thing if they were in his position, if they were lucky enough to love and be loved by sheer perfection.

            He brushed his thumb across her soft, pink lips.

            “ _Candy…”_ he sighed.

            _“Bill…”_ she sighed.

            He blessed his eidetic memory, because he knew every moment with her would be perfectly preserved.

            Not to overstate things, but Bill Mulder was the luckiest man in the sum of human existence.

***

            After shooting one more nauseated look at the happy couple, Isaac scrawled David and Danny’s wishes on the whiteboard, where they joined Linda’s wish (feeling like she had before her pregnancy), Subhi’s wish (that the convention would be unforgettable), Victoria’s wish (that she would not smoke anymore), and Claire’s wish (seeing the Houston Stars Country Western Experience in concert).

            “That’s two more wishes that came true!” Susan announced. She was still holding onto her lottery ticket with white fingers, unwilling to let it go.

            “Three more,” Scully corrected. “Harris Gifford said that he _did_ wish for his hair back.” She wrote the wish underneath David’s additions.

            Isaac, Susan, and Scully stared at the white board, which was covered with wishes. Then in unison, they turned to the other whiteboard, which was also covered with wishes. Losing weight. Eight more lottery wishes. Their child getting into Harvard. Boyfriend popping the question. Breaking the case. Getting promoted. Going to Paris. The Clash getting back together. Each wish had been improbably and at times nonsensically granted. The Missouri lottery was going to go bankrupt.

            Isaac folded his arms across his chest and took a step back, surveying the two boards together. "200 wishes..." he commented eventually. "200 FBI agents who are supposed to serve this country. You'd think _someone_ would have wished for world peace or ending hunger. Look at these wishes..." He tapped the whiteboard on the left. "This guy wished his office would get rid of 'that smell.'" He shook his head. "We are _so_ selfish."

            Scully defended her fellow agents. "It's not that we're selfish," she explained. "The point of the exercise was to articulate something you wanted _to_ your partner. Wishing for world peace is useless. We didn't think the wishes would _come true._ "

            The three agents stared at the boards again.

            “This is unreal…” said Susan.

            “This is crazy,” said Isaac.

            “This can’t be happening,” said Susan.

            “This is absolutely bonkers,” said Isaac.

            The two continued their conversation along these lines, stopping only when the giggling from the two lovers in the corner increased.

            “I love you more!” Mulder crooned.

            “I love _you_ more!” Candy insisted.

            They leaned in for a kiss, and Scully pulled her partner out of his seat. “Get a hold of yourself, Mulder!” she whispered. “We _told_ you that you’re not really in love with each other—it’s the effects of those candles, remember?”

            “Bill!” he corrected. “And I told _you,_ ” Mulder continued, sitting back down so he could kiss the palm of Candy’s hand, “that I think that theory is crazy. Who ever heard of magical wishing candles? But men have been falling in love with beautiful women since the beginning of time…” He sighed and whispered something in Candy’s ear. Candy blushed and batted her eyelashes so cartoonishly she might as well have been Minnie Mouse.

            “Normally I like seeing lovebirds…” Susan commented. “But this is too sugary even for me…”

            “Just be happy they’re not trying to fool around, I guess,” Isaac murmured. He was right: so far, Mulder and Candy’s romance had been blessedly chaste. Thank God, but Scully wasn’t sure how long that was going to last. They had to figure out a way to undo these wishes before things got more serious.

            “It should be over soon,” Scully said, feigning confidence. “Victoria and Subhi should be arriving at that store where they got those candles any minute now.”

As if on cue, her cellphone starting ringing. It was Victoria.

            “The store’s not there!” Victoria shouted.

            “The _building’s_ not there!” Scully heard Subhi wail in the background.

            “What do you mean, it’s not there?” Scully demanded.

            “It’s gone!” Victoria answered. “I’m standing in an empty lot right now! It doesn’t look like there _ever_ was a building here.”

            “What do the neighbors say?” Scully asked, staring at Mulder planting butterfly kisses on Candy’s arm.

            “It’s 5:30 pm on a Saturday in a crummy area of Kansas City,” Victoria pointed out. “There _are_ no neighbors. It’s like a ghost town, here. We’re trying to get some people from the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce on the line, but no luck so far.”

            Scully told the other FBI agents Victoria’s news.

            “But how’re we supposed to reverse the wishes if we can’t get more candles?” Isaac demanded.

            “ _Do_ we need to reverse the wishes?” Susan asked, stroking her lottery ticket.

            “For the last time, Susan, _yes!”_ Scully insisted. “Isaac sent a man to the hospital,” she pointed to Isaac, who slumped in his seat again, “poor Linda is frantic that she can’t feel her baby anymore _,_ and there’s still _that!”_ She swung her arm to Mulder and Candy, who were now feeding each other Hershey’s Kisses.

“This is so stressful…” Victoria moaned on the other end of the phone. “I picked the wrong day to quit smoking.”

            “ _And,_ ” Scully added to Susan, “you don’t even _know_ where Fred is! Doesn’t that concern you, given that his wish was to relive the glory days taking down dangerous drug lords?”

            “Yesss…” Susan groaned. “Okay, yes, I _know_ we’ve got to figure out how to undo this…but _a million dollars…”_ She sighed and slipped the lottery ticket into her pocket. “Okay…okay, what can I do?”

            Scully heard some babble between Victoria and Subhi, and then Subhi’s voice rang through the phone. Apparently, she had grabbed the phone from her partner.

            “There were two extra candles,” Subhi informed her. “I gave them to two of the kids at that family reunion—maybe see if they haven’t used them?”

            “Okay, right, I’ll do that,” Scully agreed, cringing internally at what was sure to be an awkward conversation. _Sorry kids, but I need to confiscate those glitter, rainbow candles because I need to use them to undo a series of wishes…_

            Still, if it was what she had to do, she would do it. Anything to get things back to normal.

            Okay, maybe in light of her wish, “normal” wasn’t the word to employ.

            “Susan,” she instructed the woman morosely writing ‘1,000,000’ on the lower right-hand corner of the dry erase board, “you can check with the other agents—see if any of them haven’t used their candles yet. And Isaac,” she turned to Isaac and hung up her cell phone, “make sure Romeo and Juliet here don’t do anything stupid.”

            “Yes, ma’am,” Isaac agreed. He pulled a chair between the two agents and sat down in it. “Hey gang—want to play a game? Fox, you can tell me something you love about Candy. Then Candy, you can tell me something you love about Fox!”

            After insisting that Isaac henceforth refer to “Fox” as “Bill,” the lovebirds agreed enthusiastically to Isaac’s proposal, and Scully bolted from the room while Mulder was rhapsodizing about Candy’s gentle spirit.

            Scully marched through the hallway, passing David and Danny who were now arguing respectfully about how their self-admittedly terrible origami could have won the competition. They weren’t the only ones in the halls—FBI agents were mobbing every square inch of Sheraton Convention Center common space, talking excitedly amongst themselves about their various lottery wins, sweepstakes vacations to Hawaii, and their children getting into Ivy Leagues. Scully and her team had not yet revealed the source of all this good luck, but she knew it was only a time until someone leaked their theory or a couple hundred FBI agents figured it out.

            She comforted herself that other agents would be less inclined than she was to believe in the magical wish-granting ability of glittery, rainbow candles. After all, apart from his sudden infatuation with Candy, Mulder was now “normal,” and Mulder hadn’t believed her even after she’d explained everything and shown him Susan’s lottery ticket and Victoria’s flame-retardant cigarettes.

            The clump of agents in the hall was so densely packed that they barely made room for Claire, who was now pushing a Linda-laden wheelchair to the exit, where she would meet an ambulance. Although Linda had initially been relieved to feel like she wasn’t pregnant, that relief had transformed to panic several hours ago. Scully had considered explaining matters to her, but would Linda believe her? She had barely managed to convince Isaac and Susan.

            “Make way! Move aside!” Claire called. “Pregnant woman in a wheelchair coming through!”

            Scully followed in their wake until the hallway branched off, at which point she elbowed her way to the left until she stood outside Activity Room G. On the door hung a sign crafted from construction paper and gift-wrapping ribbon. The center of the sign had “Welcome Braggs!” in crayon.

            Scully opened the door and slipped in to find about twenty people sitting around a table littered with photos and scrapbooking supplies. The head of every Bragg swung towards her.

            “Sorry, ma’am,” said one of the few Braggs not at the scrapbooking table. She was a middle-aged woman playing Monopoly with an old man in the corner. Judging from the number of houses and hotels on the board, they had been at it for hours. “You have the wrong room. This is our family reunion.”

            “I’m Special Agent Dana Scully, FBI,” Scully informed the room, flipping her badge and waving it so everyone got a glimpse.

            “We _know_ you’re with the FBI,” replied a bored scrapbooker.

            “ _All of you_ are with the FBI,” piped up a man by the snack table, who was chomping on a slice of sweaty pizza. “This whole hotel is overrun by FBI agents!”

            Scully ignored their comments and forged ahead with her business. “Another FBI agent—Agent Subhi Taleb—spoke with two children from your reunion yesterday.”

            A blonde woman at the scrapbooking table sighed. “What did they do now?”

            “Nothing,” Scully assured her. “But she gave them something that we need back—two candles.” She started to give a brief description of the candles in question, but the woman cut her off.

            “Ma’am, we know what you’re talking about. Rainbow candles—they look like Lisa Frank manufactured them.”

            Scully wasn’t sure who Lisa Frank was, but she let it pass. “Where are they now?”

            The blonde rose an eyebrow. “In the trash, covered with vomit.” Seeing Scully’s confusion, she elaborated. “Somehow, Tyler and Jenny got ahold of a gigantic stash of candy bars and their weight in grape soda.”

            “Which they then ate,” added the Bragg to her left.

            “And barfed,” added the Bragg to _his_ left.

            The man at the snack table put down his pizza in distaste. “All over their toys, including those rainbow candles.”

            “Don’t forget the pool…” added a teenager slumped in the corner, his face hidden behind a copy of _Catcher in the Rye._ “They had to drain it, so no swimming for the rest of the weekend…”

            “I’m so _boooooored,”_ whined another teenager, her face hidden behind a copy of _YM_.

            Scully made a quick exit and elbowed her way back to Activity Room D, which was now empty. Hopefully, Isaac still had Mulder and Candy under control. She reminded herself that he would call her if anything went really wrong—she couldn’t worry about that now.

            She paced by the door and considered what she’d learned. The children had almost certainly used up their wishes—that would explain their sugary windfall.

            She and Isaac had already tried wishing to undo all the wishes on a used candle, and that hadn’t worked. They needed a candle that hadn’t been used—and, judging from the instructions on the candle packaging, a person who hadn’t yet wished on one, since apparently only one wish per person was allowed. She had to hope that Susan had found one FBI agent who hadn’t bothered to use their candle. Surely there must have been one person who thought the activity was so ridiculous they hadn’t bothered to make a wish.

            Susan entered the room, and from the look on her face, Scully knew she had been unsuccessful. “I asked all the remaining agents,” Susan told her, “and everyone used theirs.” She placed a roster she had used to keep track of the agents on the table.

            “You asked _everybody?”_ Scully demanded.

            Susan admitted that she hadn’t asked _everybody,_ but since the people she hadn’t managed to ask had left for fabulous vacations they had just won, it didn’t look great. She walked to the whiteboard and began writing down some new wishes she’d learned (“Getting rid of the lisp.” “Being put in charge of the Tampa office.” “My brother moving out.”).

            “There must be _someone…_ ” Scully said. “What about Peter Cai?”

            Susan shook her head. “He’s been missing all day, but I spoke with his partner Charlie, and Charlie says Peter also wished to win the lottery.” She added a tick mark to the lottery winners. “The Missouri Lottery is in for a shock, huh? When it rains, it pours…”

            Scully scanned the roster that Subhi had provided. There must be _someone_ on this list who hadn’t made a wish…

            She looked at the tick marks she, Isaac, and Susan had written beside each name. So many names—198 agents in attendance…

            She scanned the list—the A’s, the B’s, the C’s…

            And then when she reached the M’s, she stopped.

            “Susan!” she gasped. “ _Mulder_ never made a wish!”

            “What?” Susan stared at her. “I just interviewed 200 agents and the one we needed was _in the room with us?”_

“I forgot!” Scully exclaimed, feeling simultaneously relieved and stupid. “He lit the candle and blew it out—but he didn’t make a wish! We need to get his candle—it’s probably still in his hotel room!”

            “And we need to get _him,”_ Susan pointed out, looking around the room. “Where is he?”

            No sooner had Susan asked the question then gun shots blasted out in the hallway.


	9. Four Agents Crouch in the Lobby

***

            “Just like the old days, eh Fred?” Pete Cai asked, his face covered by an exhilarated smile. “Who would have thought that the Tiger would have headquartered his enterprise in Kansas City, of all places?”

            Fred whimpered and licked his lips. His tongue felt dry, and his hands were shaky, unlike those of Pete, who had already managed to shoot 25 members of the Tiger’s cartel at that abandoned warehouse. It had taken hours to convince Pete to slip out of the warehouse and call for backup—and now somehow the cartel had followed them back to the Sheraton Convention Center?

            What world was he _living_ in? Why would drug smugglers _follow_ the FBI agents _to the Sheraton Convention Center?_

            He hadn’t had the heart to call Judy. What would he tell her? “Hi honey, just calling to say I’m under fire—make sure Jack picks up his toys?” No. Consequently, his voicemail box was steadily filling up. They were probably frantic messages demanding his whereabouts, but he couldn’t think about that now.

            “What a great day!” Pete Cai exclaimed, peering over the overturned coffee table they were using as cover, shooting his gun, and nodding in satisfaction when he heard the accompanying yelp as his bullet hit its mark. “First I win the lottery and then you and I stumble into a hive of heroin smugglers—this group must be supplying the whole Midwest! Amazing!”

            Fred jumped as bullets sprayed the wall behind them, causing the bland hotel art to fall to the ground, pockmarked canvas and splintered frames. Oh God. How had he ever missed this life? He would give all of Pete Cai’s lottery winnings just to see Judy, Jack, and Mary one last time…

            “Pete,” he meant to say, but no sound came out. He had to try three more times before he successfully spoke loud enough to be heard over the barrage of bullets. “Pete, we need to get people out of here!” There were civilians in this hotel—the employees, those people having that family reunion—not to mention all the FBI agents who were not accustomed to combat. Pencil pushers like Susan who hadn’t shot a gun since the Academy. Heck, it has been a while for _him,_ too. How had he even gotten the gun he was holding? He didn’t carry a gun anymore! Had Pete given it to him? The whole day was a horrible blur.

            “Relax, Fred!” Pete rolled his eyes. “That’s what we’re doing—holding off the bad guys so they can’t get farther into the hotel. And don’t worry about the receptionist. I saw her run into the back office.”

            Fred and Pete were crouched in the middle of the Sheraton lobby, and the members of the Tiger’s cartel were, for inexplicable reasons, attempting to storm the Sheraton. Fred had already contacted the local police and the Kansas City regional office. Meanwhile, other FBI agents had set up their own barricades to protect the hotel’s occupants. Behind the couch a few feet away, an agent from the New York office shot one of the criminals straight in the forehead.

            Fred stared at the criminal’s body—slumped by the brochure rack, blood pooling from the forehead, dripping down his snake-tattooed arm—until Pete pulled Fred back behind the coffee table just in time to avoid another spray of bullets. The coffee table and the couch were on the thicker side, but even so, their ability to stop these bullets was nothing short of miraculous. Fred suspected the interference of a higher power.

            “You’ve gotten soft, Fred!” Pete shouted, shooting another one. “Pick up your gun and getting shooting!”

            Oh God—what was going on? Why would the cartel _chase them_ across Kansas City? It was like he couldn’t escape this horrible nightmare. And for every guy that Pete shot, another seemed to take his place. He could have sworn they’d already killed a guy with a snake tattoo back at the warehouse.

            Admittedly, however, snake tattoos were not uncommon within drug cartels.

            There was a pause as the cartel members reloaded their firearms, and one of the FBI agents from another room used the lull as an opportunity to dive for their barricade. It was Susan, he realized, as she enveloped him a fierce hug. Another agent had accompanied her—Dana Scully, he realized vaguely.

            “Fred!” Susan shouted, releasing him. “Are you okay—what’s going on—hey, where did I get this gun?”

            Indeed, she was holding a Glock. Where did those things keep coming from? It was like they were appearing out of thin air.

            “Fred, I need your room keycard!” Dana shouted.

            He blinked at this non-sequitur. “My keycard?”

            Susan also stared at Dana. “Dana,” she cried, “I think there are some _more important things_ going on than those _wishes_ right now!”

            To lend her words credence, at that moment one of the drug cartel, a burly man wearing an eyepatch, vaulted over the barricade the cartel had constructed out of brochure racks. He charged at the coffee-table barricade, brandishing a machete in each hand as he did so and bellowing an incomprehensible war cry.

            Dana rolled her eyes, removed her gun from her holster, and casually shot the man in his heart. He staggered back, dropped his machetes, and crumpled to the ground.

            Dana jerked her head at her victim. “The wishes _are_ what’s going on right now. Doesn’t this drug cartel seem a little _cartoonish_ to you?”

            “Well…” Susan studied the men on the other side of the lobby, “they _are_ wearing a lot of bandoliers…”

            “Yeah,” Pete Cai frowned, shooting another of them, “and some of their barricade is made out of crates labeled ‘HEROIN.’ Why would they be labeled that? And did they bring their own crates for the purpose of setting up a barricade…?”

            Fred was unable to take any relief from these observations. As another spray of bullets started, he dropped his gun and clamped his hands over his head, whispering a prayer, and then he lifted his hands to find—

            “Goddammit another gun!” he screamed. He was, indeed, holding a Glock. “Where do these things keep _coming_ from?” Tears were streaming down his face. “I just want to go _home!”_

“I know, Fred, I know,” Susan said soothingly, rubbing her gun-less hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to be all right. We’re going to stop this.” She reached into his jacket pocket, extracted his keycard and handed it to Dana.

            “Thanks!” Dana gasped and stuck the card in her pocket. She squatted on the ground with the look of someone ready to bolt. “We need to get to the stairwell!” She eyed Fred and Pete. “Can you two give us cover?”

            Pete affirmed his ability in an enthusiastic, profanity laced response. Susan, however, shook her head.

            “I’m not going with you!” she told Dana. “You’ll have to go alone.”

            “What?” Dana stared at her. “But—”

            “My place is here with Fred!” Susan insisted and, to punctuate her point, reached over the coffee table and shot one of the cartel who had just peeked out from behind a potted plant.

            “Oh, thank God!” Fred gasped. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m terrified!”

            “I noticed,” Susan assured him, grabbing his hand. She turned to Dana. “You’ll have to go it alone—all three of us will give you cover!” Bullets pelted the coffee table, causing Fred to drop his second gun, and Susan revised her promise. “Pete and I will give you cover.”

            They waited for another lull, and then Dana darted from behind the coffee table, barely making it into the stairwell before the cartel commenced their next barrage of bullets. She slammed the door, truncating Pete Cai’s hooting of, “Yippe ki yay, mother—” 

***

            “I know I’m not any relation to the patient but—look, I’m with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and—okay, could you _please—”_ Subhi stared at her phone in shock. “She hung up on me!”

            The “she” in question was the uncompromising nurse at Richmond General, who had refused to give Subhi details about Bryce Sims’s condition.

            “I told you it was a waste of time,” replied Victoria, putting the gas nozzle back in its holder. The kiosk printed her receipt, which she stuffed in her pocket. “They’re not supposed to give information to strangers. It’s against policy. Anyway,” she opened the car door and sat back in the driver’s seat, “why do you care?”

            “Why do I _care?”_ Subhi’s pitch jumped an octave before the last word of the question. “A man has been _hospitalized_ because of me!”

            Victoria shook her head. “A man was hospitalized because he decided to buy a Jeep despite living in an urban area, and then he made a sharp turn, and the Jeep flipped. Did you design Jeeps to have high centers of gravity?”

            “No, but—”

            “And did you market what should be a specialty vehicle to the general population?”

            “No, but—”

            “But nothing,” Victoria said, pulling out her map and tracing the route back to the Sheraton. “It’s not your fault.”

            Subhi played with her seatbelt. “Isaac wished for Bryce to be hurt and it _happened.”_

“So blame Isaac, then.”

            “But _I was the one_ responsible for the wishing candles!” Subhi pointed out, leaning her forehead against the glove compartment. “And now I’ve upended everyone’s lives and _ruined_ the weekend—this weekend was going to be _so perfect!_ We were _supposed_ to be doing the arm wrestling right now!”

            “Arm wrestling?” Victoria looked up from her map. “What arm wrestling?”

            “You know—the arm wrestling activity!” Subhi looked at Victoria with reproachful, slightly red eyes. “Didn’t you read my activity schedule?”

            “Uh, yeah,” Victoria lied, “but refresh me on the arm wrestling?”

            Subhi lifted her head, opened the glove compartment, and dug around in it until she extracted a package of tissues. “It’s the activity,” she explained, wiping her eyes, “where you and you partner are told that every time you can get your partner’s hand to touch the table in 30 seconds, you get a point. And the person with the most points, wins.”

            “Okay,” Victoria nodded, “you just described arm wrestling…”

            “ _But_ ,” Subhi continued, “that’s the trick—that’s what everyone assumes, but it’s _not_ normal arm wrestling. You’re supposed to realize that you and your partner are a team, so your points are cumulative, and it’s in your best interests to work together and swing your arms back and forth so both your hands touch the table as many times as possible…” She dabbed her eyes with the tissue. “It was going to blow their minds…”

            “Well…” Victoria patted her shoulder, “maybe we can move that to tomorrow. Everything will be better by then—that X-Files woman is on the case…she seems to know what she’s doing. Too bad her partner’s out of it—I bet he—speak of the Devil!” she exclaimed, and pointed to a car pulling into the Shell gas station, driven by Fox. He parked the car and stepped out, rushing to the passenger side to open the door for that other agent—Candy. Then Candy’s partner Isaac emerged from the back seat.

            “What do you think _they’re_ doing?” Subhi asked. The last she’d heard, Fox, Candy, and Isaac had all been at the Sheraton with the other agents. Now why were they stepping into a Shell gas station store?

            Victoria hopped in her seat to get a glimpse through the gas station window. “Candy’s looking through the CD and tapes up front. I don’t see the other two—maybe using the bathroom?”

            Subhi frowned. She unbuckled her seatbelt and opened her car door. “I’m going in,” she announced.”

            The only occupants in the main room of the gas station were a bored cashier reading an Archie comic and Candy, who was intently searching through a bin of CDs. Subhi scanned the rest of the store, but she didn’t see Mulder or Isaac anywhere. Either they were crouched behind the rack of chips, or Victoria was right and they had gone to use the bathroom.

            She joined Candy by the CD bin.

            “Excuse me,” she waved, and succeeded in drawing Candy’s attention from _52 Tracks of Polka._ “I’m Subhi—we met briefly yesterday.”

            “Oh, right, I remember.” Candy nodded at her. “You’re running the seminar.” She looked back at the bin of CDs. “Can you help me here? I’m looking for a CD with ‘Wedding Bell Blues’ on it.”

            “Um…”

            “It’s a Motown song,” Candy elaborated. “By 5th Dimension. You know,” she began to sing in a decent voice, “ _Bill, I love you so, I always will…_ that song.”

            “Oh, um, okay…” Subhi began flipping through CDs, hastily dismissing _Bible Songs FOR KIDS_ and the soundtrack to _Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat._ “Why are you looking for this song specifically?”

            “Because,” Candy answered, setting aside _Best of the 60s_ with a sigh of disappointment, “it’s Bill and my song, and I want to play it at our wedding.”

            “Bill? But I thought—”

            “Agent Mulder,” Candy explained, skimming the tracklist of _50 Years of Love Songs._ “He’s going by Bill now. And we’re getting married.”

            “Married? Now?” Subhi yelped.

            Candy smiled dreamily. “What’s the use of waiting,” she asked, “when you’ve found the one?”

            “Uh…” Oh no. That had escalated quickly.

            Great. Another thing she had messed up. It wasn’t exactly in the league of poor Bryce Sims being maimed in a car accident, but still, it was another thing to add to the increasingly long ‘Things Subhi Taleb Screwed up this Weekend’ list.

            She felt physically ill. Maybe _she_ should use the bathroom.

            It was at this moment that Candy victoriously grasped two copies of _Best of Motown._ “Perfect!” she gasped. “Track 5! I’m going to get two copies, just to be sure nothing ruins my special day. Now…” she scanned the gas station. “Do you see anything blue here? And can I borrow something?”

            Subhi handed Candy her blue lanyard complete with a nametag labeled ‘Subhi Taleb: DC HR.’ “I’m going to use the washroom,” she groaned, and stumbled off. “Congratulations.”

            “Thank you!” Candy called after her.

            When Subhi stepped into the hallway with the bathrooms, she noticed Isaac loitering outside of the men’s room, tossing his car keys up and down. He waved at her.

            “Didn’t expect to see _you_ here,” he commented.

            “Um…I just had a conversation with Candy…” Subhi jerked her thumb behind her. “She says they’re getting _married?”_

Isaac nodded, looking positively gleeful. “Isn’t it great?” he asked.

            Subhi stared at him. “Um, no,” she raised an eyebrow. “It’s _not great._ Best case scenario, they get an annulment—and even _that—”_

Isaac shook his head. “I needed something to occupy them,” he told her. “So now they’re planning the wedding. It’s perfect—they’ve quit fooling around, and they’re just discussing cake frosting and minivans!”

            “Isaac,” Subhi sighed, “I really don’t think this is a good idea.”

            “It’ll be fine,” Isaac brushed her wariness aside, and tossed his car keys up once more. “It’ll be weeks before the license comes through, and—”

            “Isaac!” Subhi interrupted him. “Missouri is a no-wait state!”

            Isaac dropped the keys. “Shit!”

***

            Screaming met Scully’s ears when she opened the stairwell door. Standing in the corner was the teenage girl from the Bragg family reunion. She was clutching her copy of _YM_ to her chest as if it was bullet proof. “Don’t hurt me!” she begged.

            “I’m not going to—calm down!” Scully shouted. She marched over to the girl, dodged a weak punch, and grabbed the girl’s wrist. “I’m an FBI agent—Dana Scully—we met earlier today!”

            The girl was hyperventilating now, but at least she’d stopped screaming. She stared at Scully and began to take longer, deeper breaths. “What’s going on?” she finally asked. “It sounds like there’s gunfire out there!”

            Scully nodded. “There is.” She released the girl’s wrist and started to walk up the stairs. “But everything’s going to be okay. Your family is surrounded by 200 FBI agents who are going to make sure you all get through this safely. Stick with me for now.”

            The girl nodded and they started an uncomfortable walk up the stairs to the third floor—uncomfortable because the girl—whose name Scully learned was Chelsie—was walking as closely to Scully as possible. She had grabbed Scully’s hand like her life depended on it…in a way, she probably thought it did.

            Scully dismissed the idea of explaining to the girl that they were in no real danger. For one thing, Chelsie would never believe her. For another, Scully wasn’t sure that was true; just because the cartel seemed like they weren’t real, it didn’t mean their bullets weren’t.

            She settled for explaining to the girl that emergency personnel was on its way. Soon they found themselves in front of Room 323. Scully jammed Fred’s keycard in, yanked it out, and entered. Chelsie followed her so closely that the girl’s knees hit the backs of Scully’s legs.

            “Is this where we’re waiting it out?” Chelsie asked, wiping tears from her face. She was scanning the room—probably looking for the safest place to hide. She moved for the desk.

            “We’re looking for a candle,” Scully replied, digging through Mulder’s luggage. Running shoes—a brush, clothes, a porno magazine— _why was she surprised—_

            If Chelsie thought it was strange that they were looking for a candle in the middle of a gun fight, she didn’t express that opinion to Scully. She just nodded, and looked almost grateful for an assignment. She stepped into the bathroom, and within seconds hollered, “Is this the candle you’re looking for?” She emerged clutching a rainbow candle—only barely used. “I found it in the trash.”

            “Yes!” Scully dashed over, took the candle, and grabbed the box of matches that lay on the _TV Guide._ “Now Chelsie, I need you to do something important, but it’s going to sound kind of silly…”

            Chelsie shrank back against the wall, eyeing her warily.

            “I’m going to light this candle,” Scully told her. “And when I do, I need you to make a wish. Out loud. And then blow out the candle.”

            Chelsie now looked terrified. Not that she had ever really _stopped_ looking terrified.

            “I need you to say that you wish to undo all of the wishes from the last 24 hours,” Scully told her, trying to make her voice as comforting and calming as possible. “I can’t explain why you need to do this—but you do. You’re just going to have to trust me on this. Do you understand?”

            Chelsie shook her head.

            Well, that was to be expected.

            “Do you understand what I’m asking you to do?” Scully clarified.

            Chelsie nodded her head hesitantly. “You want me to wish on that candle and blow it out…?”

            Scully made Chelsie repeat the exact wording she wanted a few times before she ultimately lit the candle. Chelsie said the words as directed and blew out the candle.

            Scully took a deep sigh. “Okay, good job, Chelsie.” She started to pat Chelsie on the shoulder, but thought better of it when Chelsie shrank back. She clearly thought Scully was crazy. Scully couldn’t blame her.

***

            “Sorry Dana,” Victoria sighed. She clicked her Zippo lighter a couple more times and held the flame against another Morley. “No dice. The wish didn’t take.” She clicked off her lighter and stuffed it along with her cigarettes back in her pocket. Then she picked up her cell phone, which she had been cradling between her shoulder and her left ear.

            “Damn,” she heard Dana swear through the phone. “I really thought that would work.”

            “Nope,” Victoria walked away from her car, which was parked in the Sheraton parking lot, and straightened to her full height to get a glimpse beyond the mob of emergency personnel that choked the hotel’s entrance. “Looks like the shootout at the O.K. Corral is still ongoing, too.”

            The parking lot was now crowded with confused police officers and other emergency responders. They’d managed to shoot through the Sheraton’s large windows to give them a clear shot at the cartel, but for every member they shot, another one seemed to take his place. And when they tried speaking to the cartel through megaphones to negotiate, they didn’t get any comprehensible response back.

            Why _would_ a drug cartel start a shootout at a Sheraton, anyway? That was the question on everyone’s lips.

            “I think you’re right,” Victoria said to Dana. “This shootout has _got_ to be the result of Fred’s wish.”

            “Then we _must_ be right about the candles,” Dana insisted. “That just _confirms_ it. So why didn’t Chelsie’s wish _work?”_

“Well…” Victoria paced by the ‘WELCOME TO THE SHERATON’ sign, and strained her brain to theorize in the land of the impossible, “you said that Agent Mulder blew the candle out, right? Maybe he already made a wish.”

            “But he _didn’t,”_ Dana replied. “I was there—he didn’t say anything out loud and the instructions say the wish has to be out loud.”

            “Maybe he made a wish _after_ ,” Victoria suggested. “When he went back to his room. That’s where you found the candle, right?”

            Again, Dana rejected this theory. “I found the matchbook in his room, and it’s not missing any matches.”

            “Maybe he used a lighter.”

            “Mulder doesn’t smoke, and he doesn’t carry a lighter,” Dana said.

            “How do you know he doesn’t carry a lighter?” Victoria demanded. “People carry lighters who aren’t smokers.”

            “I _know_ Mulder,” Dana said, an edge of irritation audible as she repeated her old refrain. “I _know_ what he normally has with him. He _doesn’t_ carry a lighter.”

            “Okay, okay,” Victoria relented. “So maybe he made a wish _without_ relighting the candle.”

            “He wouldn’t do that,” Dana insisted. “If Mulder was going to accept the conceit of a wishing candle—which he might,” she admitted, “he would insist on doing things _right._ That would include relighting the candle so you can make your wish and then blow it out.”

            “And you know this?” Victoria said skeptically. “You _know_ he would think this way?”

            “I _know_ Mulder,” Dana repeated. “But if you don’t believe me, I guess I’ll just have to find him…he must be somewhere in the hotel…”

            “Huh?” Victoria stopped her pacing and frowned. “No, he’s not. You don’t _know_?”

            There was a pause. “Don’t know what?”

            “He, Candy, and Isaac left the hotel,” Victoria informed Dana. “Subhi and I ran into them at the gas station. Subhi says that Candy and Agent Mulder are going to get a wedding license, and then they’re gonna get a quickie wedding—”

            There was a longer pause. Then, in a flat, low voice: “What?”

            “Some place called—what was it—Auntie Emma’s Quickie Chapel or,” Victoria thought for a moment, “look, I don’t remember the _exact_ name. Some place Agent Mulder saw advertised in the newspaper.”

            “Would it be…” Dana suggested slowly, “Auntie Irma’s Shotgun Wedding Chapel?”

            “That’s it!” Victoria agreed. “How did you know?”

            Dana ignored the question. “Where are they now?”

            “On their way to whatever government official can give them a wedding license, I guess,” Victoria answered. “Subhi went with them. She thought that together, maybe she and Isaac would be able to keep them from tying the knot.”

***

            Mulder wasn’t picking up his cell phone. Neither was Isaac. Neither was Candy. Neither was Subhi.

            “Damnit!” Scully spat. She restrained her urge to hurtle her cell phone through the windshield.

            The only spot of luck she’d had was that the emergency personnel’s realization that only the lobby was experiencing the drug cartel shoot out. They had evacuated the rest of the Sheraton through other exits. The police couldn’t explain it, but Scully could: it was Fred’s wish, so it was localized around him. Since he was in the lobby, the rest of the hotel was safe.

            Immediately upon exiting the Sheraton, she’d left Chelsie with the relieved Bragg family, and raced to Fred’s rental vehicle. She’d had the foresight to take the car keys from Fred’s bedside table. Now she sat in the car, one hand grasping her cell phone and her other hand grasping the Auntie Irma’s Shotgun Wedding Chapel advertisement she’d ripped out of the _Kansas City Star_. The ad featured a simple map pointing the way to the destination where Mulder and Candy had decided to join each other in holy matrimony.

            Maybe not so holy at Auntie Irma’s Shotgun Wedding Chapel.

            She would soon find out exactly what type of establishment Auntie Irma’s was. With the wedding party incommunicado, she had no way to stop the wedding except for heading to the chapel herself.

            She stuck the key in the ignition and turned it.

            She just hoped she could get there in time.


	10. One Agent Breaks up Two Weddings

            Auntie Irma’s Shotgun Wedding Chapel wasn’t exactly the site Scully would have selected for her wedding. It was outside of the city in the middle of farmland. In fact, the “chapel” looked like it was just a farmhouse that someone had painted over in Pepto-Bismol pink. Wooden signs on which someone had painted cartoon cupids flanked the gravel path to the house. The cluck of chickens was audible. They must have had a coop in the backyard.

            She pulled next to another car—she assumed Candy and Isaac’s rental—and lurched out, dashing across the lawn.

            She was going to object at a wedding—this was a first. She had a momentary image of herself in sweaty khakis and a windbreaker pounding on a church window while wailing, “ _Mulder!”_

Truly, she had never thought it would come to this.

            She ran up the porch steps and wrenched the door open to find herself in a small waiting area. It had a homey feel: furniture with overstuffed upholstery, doilies everywhere imaginable, and amateurish paintings hanging on the walls. There were only three indications that she was in a place where people got married: (1) a stack of brochures for various honeymoon hotels in the area, (2) the wedding march leaking in from double doors to her left, and (3) a sign on those double doors saying, “Shh! Wedding in progress!”

            She burst through the doors and in her loudest voice ordered, “Stop the wedding!”

            Two strangers at the alter stared at her.

            Scully blinked at them. They weren’t Mulder and Candy.

            Then the woman spoke. “Who is _she?”_ she snarled, whacking her groom with her bouquet. Not waiting for an answer, she hurried away as fast as she could, which wasn’t all that fast considering she must have been about eight months pregnant.

            “I don’t know, baby!” insisted the groom. He couldn’t have been much over 20, judging by the acne that still pocked his face. He followed his bride down the altar. “I’ve never seen her before in my life!”

            “A likely story, Bobby!” shrieked the bride, tears streaming down her face. “You pig! My sister was right about you!” She threw the bouquet at him and waddled through the double doors.

            “Baby, no!” screamed Bobby and chased after her, leaving Scully in the room with three other people: the officiant standing at the end of the altar and an elderly couple sitting to the side eating popcorn. One of them had a small boombox on her lap, which she turned off, stopping the wedding march.

            Scully swiveled around the room. “Mulder!” she called, frantically looking for her partner—but the room was small, about the size of her and Mulder’s basement office, and was free of any furniture except for six folding chairs, a small wedding arch, and a table littered with brochures. She couldn’t have missed him.

            The officiant cleared his throat. “May we help you?” he eventually asked.

            She flashed her badge. “Special Agent Dana Scully, FBI.”

            “Wow, Walter!” shouted the woman who had turned off the boombox. She was patting the shoulder of the man who was sitting next to her. “It’s a G-woman!”

            “Well, will ya look at that…” Walter nodded, slowly eating a few more kernels of popcorn. “I didn’t think little Bobby had it in ‘im. How ‘bout you, Peg?”

            The officiant nodded to the peanut gallery. “You’ll have to excuse my professional witnesses,” he told Scully. “Usually when we get objections, it’s from an irate parent or ex-wife.”

            “Sometimes a current wife!” Walter added.

            “Which’re you, dearie?” asked Peg.

            Scully squared her shoulders and prepared herself for what was sure to be a strange conversation. “None—I’m—I didn’t mean to break up that wedding.”

            The officiant raised an eyebrow. “Oh? It’s just that when people run into this room yelling ‘Stop the wedding!,’ they usually mean to…”

            “Stop the wedding!” Peg finished, nodding vigorously.

            “You sure gave a good impression of someone hell bent on stoppin’ that wedding,” added Walter.

            “I meant to stop _a_ wedding,” Scully explained. “But not _that_ one.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and took a few deep breaths to calm her nerves.

            “Just look at ‘er!” shouted Walter. “She looks like she’s about to keel over!”

            Scully straightened up. “I am _not_ about to keel over!” she snapped as if Walter had insulted her. She turned to the officiant. “Has a man named Fox Mulder been here?”

            “Fox Mulder?” the officiant, Peg, and Walter all turned the name over like they were tasting it.

            “What kind of darn name is that?” demanded Walter, who had not found the name to his taste.

            “What does Fox Mulder look like?” asked Peg.

            Scully rattled off a physical description. “White male, 38 years old, six feet tall, dark hair, a mole on his right cheek, a large nose, hazel eyes—”

            “Shoo, what a description! We don’t need a novel!” Walter objected. “Peg could paint his face in less time than you take to describe it!” He clarified for Scully that his darling Peg painted the prettiest pictures. “Show the g-woman some of your pictures, Peg!” he instructed. Peg dutifully puttered off to find one, not listening as Scully insisted that she didn’t need to see any pictures.

            “Sir,” Scully addressed the officiant, who seemed like her best bet of getting a straight answer, “my partner Special Agent Fox Mulder is eloping, but he’s not in his right mind. If he’s not here, where else could he have gone to get that done? Are there other chapels in the area?”

            The officiant considered this. “We’re the only place to get speedy marriages in the area…he could go to Madame L’Amour’s in Junction City, I suppose, but that’s 60 miles off…”

            Junction City? Wasn’t that the town with the three-headed dog?

            It didn’t matter. Scully would wrestle that three-headed dog herself if it meant putting everything back to normal. She grabbed an “Explore Missouri!” brochure that had a map on it from the table and shoved it at the officiant. “Show me,” she ordered.

            The officiant was tracing the path to Madame L’Amour’s on the map when Scully began to hear a song playing outside—faint at first, but growing louder by the second.

            _I was on your side Bill when you were losin'._

            _I'd never scheme or lie Bill. There's been no foolin'._

            _But kisses and love won't carry me, ‘til you marry me Bill!_

            “Never mind,” she said, whirling to the doors. “That’s them.”

            Scully burst into the waiting room just as Mulder, Candy, Isaac, Subhi, and Peg entered from the outside. Peg was carrying her boombox, from which 5th Dimension’s “Wedding Bell Blues” blared.

            _I was the one came runnin’ when you were lonely._

            _I haven't lived one day not loving you only._

            Scully was really beginning to hate that song.

            “Look who I found outside!” cried a delighted Peg. She was gazing admiringly at the loving couple, who were holding hands and wearing gigantic, stupid smiles.

            “Dana!” Isaac gasped behind them. “You’re here—thank God!”

            “We’ve been trying to stop them!” shouted Subhi. “But they won’t listen to us, and then when they realized we were trying to stop them, they took our cell phones, and—”

            “Dana!” Mulder noticed her. “Great, you’re here—you can be Candy’s maid of honor!”

            “Wow, Mulder…” Scully said with a flat voice. “It’s every girl’s dream to be her partner’s fiancée’s maid of honor…”

            “Oh, Dana!” Mulder turned to Candy and jabbed his thumb at Scully. “She’s great—isn’t she great—I told you she’d do it!”

            Candy nodded. “She _is_ great—but not as great as you!” Then she stuck her tongue down Mulder’s throat.

            This wasn’t the first time Scully had seen someone kiss Mulder, but it _was_ the first time she’d seen him kiss someone _back_ and Scully _did not care for it._

“Oh, what a handsome couple they make!” someone said behind her. Scully turned to the side to see Peg clasping her hands and looking at the couple dreamily. She leaned over to give Walter a peck on the cheek. “Remember when we were like them? Young and in love?”

            Walter expressionlessly munched on his popcorn. “They’re not _that_ young,” he objected. “He _does_ have a big nose,” Walter added, and used his pinky nail to pry a kernel shell from his teeth. “Amazing he can kiss at all with a honker like that.”

“Okay!” Scully said loudly, grabbing Mulder’s arm and yanking him away. “Mulder, can I talk to you in _private?”_

            “Dana,” Mulder replied patiently even as he was being pulled by his arm, “you talk to _Candy._ You and Subhi are her _bridesmaids._ Isaac will help me get ready—he’s my best man! Don’t you know how weddings work?” Then he shook Scully’s hand off, hurried to the officiant, and handed him a marriage license. “Sir,” he said, “my fiancée and I want to be married right away.”

            “Right now!” agreed Candy, rushing to Mulder and clinging to his arm like it was her lifeline. “I am sick and tired of not being married to this cutie-patootie!”

            Mulder chimed in that he was sick and tired of not being married to his sugar bunny.

            “Mulder,” Scully tried again, “I really need to—”

            Peg interrupted her, opining that Mulder and Candy were the most adorable couple ever. As the officiant explained their pricing (all weddings paid in advance), Peg fastened a fake boutonniere to Mulder’s lapel, removed his necktie, and started to tie a gold bowtie around his neck. “So you look fancy for the photos!” she explained, which prompted the officiant to begin explaining the various photo packages available.

            It was at that moment when the song started over again.

            _Bill! I love you so, I always will._

_I look at you and see the—_

That was it. Scully couldn’t take it anymore. She was _sick_ of that song. It didn’t even make _sense_ as their song. They hadn’t been involved for years, Candy had not been on his side when he was losin’, and _his name_ _wasn’t Bill!_

            And what on earth were the passion eyes of May, anyway?

Not saying anything, she marched to the boombox that Peg had set on one of the doily-covered tables, mashed the eject button, removed the CD, snapped it in half, and chucked the pieces to the floor. Then she grabbed Mulder by the arm, pulling him from Candy and Peg.

            Everyone was silently staring at her.

            “You are all going to listen to me!” she ordered in a steadier voice than she would have expected. “ _Mulder_ is not getting married to anyone—”

            “—but Dana—” Mulder objected.

            But Scully charged ahead with her speech, and tightened her grip on his arm. “This man is _not_ in his right mind, and neither is that woman!”

            She pointed to Candy at that point, who burst into tears and wailed, “Why are you _being_ like this?”

            Mulder struggled to get to his sobbing beloved, but Scully wouldn’t let go. Isaac, Peg, and the officiant were frozen in place, Subhi shuffled from side to side, unsure of what assistance she should lend, and Walter was still chomping his popcorn, unalarmed by the scene before him.

            “I’m _being_ like this,” Scully explained, tight-jawed, “because Mulder is _my partner_ and _I know him!”_ How many times today had she insisted on that fact? “Mulder, _stop it!”_ she snapped at her still-struggling partner, who to her surprise did actually stop moving. “Now,” she continued, “I am going to have a _private conversation_ with my partner. Isaac,” she flashed a glance at the agent, who was gazing at her admiringly, “it’s your job to make sure no one disturbs us.”

            “Yes, ma’am!” Isaac agreed.

            “Subhi!” Scully said next.

            Subhi snapped up like she was a soldier during roll call.

            “Stay with Candy,” Scully instructed.

            “Right!” Subhi agreed and awkwardly hugged the sobbing woman.

            “You three!” Scully cast her eyes at the officiant and the two witnesses. “I am a special agent for the FBI—I know what I’m doing! You are _not_ marrying these two!”

            The officiant and Peg exchanged wary glances. Walter nodded, looking back and forth between Mulder and Candy shrewdly.

            “I reckon she’s right,” he announced. “We’ve seen our fair share of lovebirds here, and these two ain’t right.” He jabbed a bent index finger at Candy. “Normal brides pretty themselves up, but this one here’s just wearin’ a suit.”

            This criticism just intensified Candy’s sobs, and Subhi led her out onto the porch, rubbing her back and calmingly insisting that she looked beautiful. Subhi shut the door behind her, and soon the sobs were muffled.

            “Sir!” Mulder cried, aghast. “I demand you apolo—”

            “Okay, Mulder,” Scully rolled her eyes and tugged Mulder into the hallway. “We’re having a talk _now!”_ She spotted a door labeled ‘Groom’s Dressing Room’ and opened it to find what had probably originated as a large coat closet. Scully made that deduction based on the horizontal pole that was mounted across the room, and the lone jean jacket that still hung on a clothes hanger.

            She pushed Mulder into the room and slammed the door shut.

            Mulder stared at her. “Dana!” he shouted, making for the door. “This behavior is completely unprofessional—what are you doing?”

            He was asking because in one fluid movement, Scully had extracted her handcuffs and secured Mulder to the clothes rack. She’d also used the opportunity remove his gun and Isaac and Subhi’s cell phones.           

            Mulder yelled at her to uncuff him, his right arm sliding uselessly across the length of the clothes rack.

            “Sorry Mulder,” she grunted, stepping quickly back to the other side of the closet. “I didn’t want it to come to this, but you gave me no choice.”

            “Is this because I didn’t ask you to be my best man?” Mulder demanded, ineffectively kicking at her. “Women are supposed to be _bridesmaids,_ Dana! That’s _how it’s done!”_

            Thankfully, the closet was deep enough that Mulder’s kicks missed her. Scully didn’t bother responding to Mulder’s question. Instead, she studied her surroundings. A full-length mirror hung on one of the walls. Beside it, someone had used a Sharpie to scrawl instructions for how to tie a bow tie. A folding chair leaned against the other wall, which she promptly set up by the door and sat on, facing the end of the closet where Mulder was now attempting unscrew the screws that attached the clothes rack to the wall. Since the only tool he had in his arsenal was his thumbnail, she was not concerned about his chances of success.

            Scully crossed her arms across her chest and raised her eyebrows. “Maybe this seems unfair now,” she admitted, “but in the future, you’ll thank me. Trust me.”

            “Trust _you?”_ demanded Mulder incredulously, squeezing his eyes shut as he tried to force his hand through the handcuffs. “Trust the person who _handcuffed me_ to a _coatrack_ to stop me from _marrying the woman I love?”_ He grunted from exertion and attempted to kick at her once more.

            “If what you _really_ want is to marry Candy, fine,” Scully said. “I won’t stop you—once I’m sure that that’s what you really want.”

            “I’ve got the marriage license right—” Mulder started digging around in his pocket for the marriage license, and Scully held up her hand.

            “I know you don’t believe me,” Scully said, “but you’re under the effects of the wishing candles.”

            This earned her an eyeroll. “You’re crazy, Dana. Crazy!” He moved the jean jacket so he could try to unscrew the screws on the other side of the pole.

            “Maybe,” Scully admitted. “But there’s a simple way to test my theory. And if it turns out I’m wrong, I’ll let you go.”

            Mulder stopped what he was doing and looked at her suspiciously. “You will?”

            “I will,” Scully promised. She extracted Mulder’s candle from her jacket. “Do you know what this is?”

            Mulder rolled his eyes once more. “It’s one of those stupid candles—”

            “It’s _your_ candle,” Scully specified. “You didn’t make a wish on it last night or today, did you?”

            Mulder shook his head. “Of course not. Those things _don’t work!”_

            “So,” Scully continued, “there should still be a wish on it. I tried to have someone else wish on it, but it didn’t work—”

            “Because those things _don’t work—”_

“Because you already blew it out, so it’s still waiting for _your_ wish,” Scully continued. “That’s my working theory, anyway. So I’ll tell what you what, Mulder,” Scully took out a matchbook, “I’m going to light this candle, and I want you to wish out loud to undo all the wishes that were made on these candles within the last 24 hours. And if you still want to marry Candy, then I’ll know you _really_ want to marry Candy, and I’ll unlock the handcuffs.”

            Mulder glared at her. “This is insane. When we get back to D.C., I am reporting you to—”

            “You may not believe it, but I only want what’s best for you,” Scully said calmly. “You’re my partner—you’re acting out of character, and I’m concerned because I _know_ you.”

            “I _told_ you!” Mulder exploded. “I had an epiphany and—”

            “And if that’s true,” Scully pointed out, “then I’ll uncuff you and you and your fiancée can march up the aisle. I’ll even throw rice. What have you got to lose? Unless,” she added, raising an eyebrow, “part of you is worried that I’m _right?”_

Mulder flinched. “Of course not!” he shouted. “I love Candy with all my—”

            “Then prove it,” Scully demanded. She lit the candle and slowly approached Mulder.

            Mulder glared at her and in three seconds it was done. The wish was uttered and the candle was blown out.

            “See?” demanded Mulder. “I told you I—”

            Then he stopped talking. He blinked a few times, and studied himself in the mirror.

            “Scully,” he said eventually, his eyes lingering on the fake boutonniere and the poorly tied gold bow tie, “I look really stupid right now.” He grinned at her. “I can’t believe you were going to let me get married looking like this.”

            Scully let out a long breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “I missed you, Mulder.”

            He tore off the bow tie and dropped it to the ground. “I missed me, too, Scully.”

***

            “The shootout at the hotel’s done,” Scully reported, hanging up her cell phone and setting it in the cupholder between her and Mulder. “Victoria says the drug cartel has disappeared. The hotel lobby is still a mess, but at least no one got hurt.”

            Mulder snorted beside her. “I pity whoever’s going to wind up explaining _that_ to the accounting department…” He rolled down the car window and squinted at the sun that was steadily sinking below the horizon, bathing the road’s few occupants in a golden glow.

            Victoria had given Scully a full update between drags of her cigarette. Candy’s ex-boyfriend Bryce has just made a full recovery, the flights headed to Paris and Hawaii had been canceled, and Agent Crawford’s son was back on Harvard’s waitlist. Also, the Missouri Lottery had announced a printing defect that invalidated all recently purchased tickets—they just couldn’t explain how they had accidentally started selling scratch-off lotto tickets instead of “pick a number” tickets. Scully and Mulder had a guess: the candle packaging had promised its wishes would be granted within 24 hours, and scratch-off lotto tickets were the only way that the wish could be granted within the time limit.

            “I guess Subhi’s wish is the only one that’s going to stay in effect,” Mulder predicted. “I can’t see anyone forgetting about this any time soon. Unfortunately for Candy…” After the effects of the wish had worn off, Candy had been so mortified, she’d locked herself into the bride’s dressing room at Auntie Irma’s. Isaac and Subhi had offered to stay behind and drive her back when she felt like she could show her face in public again, which Candy predicted to be the Thursday after never.

            Scully frowned. “She’ll be fine.”

            “Pretty embarrassing thing to happen.” Mulder studied his partner closely. “You don’t feel bad for her at all?”

            “ _Bad?”_ Scully snorted. “Because of _her_ wish I had to dodge bullets, chase you down, and handcuff you to a pole. She just embarrassed herself in front of Isaac and some strangers. I think I got the shorter end of the stick…”

            “Admit it,” Mulder nudged her, “ _part_ of you enjoyed handcuffing me to that pole…”

            Yes, the old Mulder was back.

            He continued: “We shouldn’t judge Candy—I don’t think we got to know the _real_ Candy this weekend. And I made an ass of myself, too.”

            “Yes, because of a wish that the _real_ Candy made,” Scully pointed out. “No one could blame you for that.”

            “Oh, I don’t blame myself,” Mulder assured her. “I blame you.”

            Scully’s hands tightened their grip on the steering wheel. “Blame _me?”_ Scully demanded. “For _what?”_ Her wish had given Mulder an upbeat, saccharine attitude that had unnerved her, but it hadn’t caused Mulder to patronize Auntie Irma’s Shotgun Chapel. That had been all Candy.

            Mulder, however, disagreed.

            “You think that man running around in my body today was what _I_ am like when I’m in love?” he asked her. “Admittedly Auntie Irma’s Shotgun Wedding Chapel _does_ match my dream wedding book,” he grinned, “but the rest of it? The house in the suburbs, a desk job in Richmond, a minivan—”

            “You never said anything about a minivan,” Scully pointed out.

            “You weren’t there the whole time,” Mulder reminded her. “There were discussions about a minivan. Something big enough so we could drive the kids to and from their soccer practices and little league games. Or maybe gymnastics. Candy was adamant that they not play football, though.”

            “Wow…” Scully murmured. “You two thought ahead.”

            He nodded. “Right. If you hadn’t stopped us from getting married, by the end of the day I would have been looking at houses in Richmond and buying prenatal vitamins…living the American dream.”

            “You’re saying…” Scully said slowly, “that by the end of the day you would have been normal?”

            He shrugged. “Not _normal_ exactly because _normal_ doesn’t exist, but yeah,” he nodded, “more or less what you _meant_ when you said you wanted me to be normal.”

            It was time for Scully to clear something up. “Mulder, I just wanted you to get along with people.” She looked intently at the dividing line in the road. She could feel Mulder’s gaze on her, but refused to look at him. “I didn’t want you to be Ward Cleaver. I just—I misspoke. And I certainly didn’t think that the wish would come true.”

            He nodded. “I know you didn’t really mean it, Scully. If you’d wanted Ward as your partner, you could have left the X-Files years ago. But still, if Candy had just made her wish and you hadn’t made yours, I don’t think things would have escalated like that. I would have been in love—or at least,” he corrected himself, “I would have been experiencing that infatuation that the wish passed off as love, but the X-Files and you and _Spooky Mulder_ would have interfered and nothing would have come of it. Star-crossed lovers, I guess.”

            Scully chewed on the inside of her cheek. She’d never thought of it that way—never considered that maybe, her wish had been necessary for Candy’s to take effect. She supposed they would never find out for certain. “So if you fell in love with someone…” Scully said slowly, “and she demanded you quit the X-Files and take some desk job, you wouldn’t do it?”

            “I don’t think we need to worry about that,” Mulder replied. He had his head turned away from her, staring at the sun’s last gasp before it disappeared completely.

            “That’s not an answer,” Scully pointed out.

            Mulder remained quiet for a while. Then: “If you fell in love with some guy,” he asked, “and _he_ demanded you quit the X-Files, would _you_?”

            Scully sighed. “I don’t think we need to worry about that,” she replied.

            Mulder bobbed his head. “There you go.” He let out a theatrical sigh and grinned at her. “Might as well face it, partner,” he said. “We’re stuck with each other. ‘Til death do us part.”

            Considering how often they landed in the hospital, death might be parting them sooner rather than later. Still, it was a nice affirmation, the kind of statement she knew she would turn over late at night when half asleep.

            “So where are we going anyway?” Mulder demanded, looking at the signs flicking past them. “This isn’t the way to the hotel.”

            “We’re not going to the hotel,” Scully confirmed. “Victoria said that the agents are mobbing the lobby, and quite a few of them are asking for us by name.”

            “Want the basement dwellers to explain why The Clash aren’t getting back together after all, huh?” Mulder asked.

            Scully nodded. “Something like that. I figured we’d wait until it died down before heading back.”

            “Okay…” Mulder accepted this. “But where _are_ we going, then?”

            Scully handed him the map the officiant had drawn her.

            “Madame L’Amour’s Chapel of Love?” Mulder read aloud. “Scully, is your new Saturday night activity stopping quickie weddings? Should I get us tickets to Vegas for next Saturday?”

            “Of course not,” Scully replied. She smiled and added, “I have plans for next Saturday.”

            “Really?” Mulder raised an eyebrow. “What?”

            “The Atlas Performing Arts Center is putting on _Cyrano de Bergerac,_ ” Scully informed him. “Susan asked me if I’d like to go with her.” She’d spoken with Susan before getting her update from Victoria. The phone call had been brief, because Susan and Fred were on their way back to the airport. Fred, shaken by the events of the day, had decided to leave the seminar early.

            “Hmm…” Mulder mulled over this announcement. “Are you and Susan…friends?”

            Scully shrugged and smiled wider. “I guess...does that surprise you?”

            “A little, yeah,” Mulder admitted. “It’s just—we don’t really _have_ friends.”

            “I know,” Scully replied. “Working in the X-Files…it’s easy to become so wrapped up in them and….” She sighed. She was glad this had come up, because she had something to say. “I owe you an apology, Mulder.”

            “You do?” Mulder quirked an eyebrow. “For the wish, you mean?”

            “Yes,” Scully agreed. “And…I think sometimes it’s easy to blame you for how…isolated I’ve become. But that’s not fair…at the end of the day, _I’m_ the one in control of how balanced my life is.”

            Mulder was silent, and for a long time they sat there, both watching the road ahead of them. Then, finally, Mulder spoke again. “I hope you know, Scully, how much I appreciate you.”

            Scully felt her cheeks heat up. “I do.”

            “And I know I can lose perspective at times and know I’ve made you miss parties and plans and appointments because of…well…”

            “Swampsquatch?” suggested Scully.

            “Right,” he nodded. “So the next time that happens, please remind me of this conversation.” They were again silent for a long time. Then Mulder, once more, was the one to break the silence. “ _Cyrano,_ huh? You like that story?”

            “You don’t?”

            “It’s always hit…uncomfortably close to home for me,” Mulder answered, wincing. “But,” he held up the map Scully had handed him, “none of this explains why we’re on our way to Madame L’Amour’s.”

            “We’re not headed to Madame L’Amour’s specifically,” Scully answered. “Madame L’Amour’s is in Junction City.”

            Mulder’s eyes widened, and a slow smile spread across his face. “Junction City, huh?”

            “I figured,” Scully said smugly, “maybe we could spend a few hours investigating a certain three-headed dog, and then head back to the Sheraton once the crowds have dispersed to get our things. Skinner’s already approved it. If that’s okay with you.”

            “No one knows me like you, partner.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At long last, this is complete. Sorry for the wait, but this last chapter went through a lot of different iterations, particularly the end scene, which was originally even longer and involved a lengthy discussion of The Graduate. There's a lot of MSR fluff that was left on the cutting room floor. Hopefully I can incorporate some of it into other stories.
> 
> Anyway, if you liked it, please let me know. I really appreciate every comment and kudos. And can we crack 100 kudos? That would be awesome.


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